Parwaz (پرواز | “soar”)

2024–2026

Santa Fe Art Institute
Santa Fe, NM

Tulsa Artist Fellowship
Tulsa, OK

NARS Foundation
New York, NY

Alhamra Arts Center
Lahore, Pkaistan

Koel Gallery
Karachi, Paksitan

The birds are abstractions—collaged photographs of glaciers and peaks from Gilgit-Baltistan's endangered landscapes. Glaciers transmute into winged forms, soaring. Their ascent suggests migration and belonging, the reunion of fragmented parts. This is alchemy: threatened terrain transformed into forms that rise, that carry hope, that refuse to vanish.

They were first created during artist residencies in 2024 as part of my “Alchemy of Disappearance” installations (Unearthing Stories From The Core project). These studio installation played with the idea of 'always becoming.' An ever-evolving sanctuary to the transfiguration from banal to precious, underscored by my extensive use of gold leaf, recalling alchemy.

Pakistan is the fifth most at-risk country in the face of climate change. This work emphasizes unexpected alignments via common concerns in Oklahoma and Gilgit-Baltistan, N. Pakistan, and similar at-risk regions in the US. and globally, as climate disaster disproportionately affects native populations. First created at Santa Fe Institute of Art, the birds also appeared in my speculative studio installation project, “Our Shadows Are Our Wings” (NARS, 2024), together with Fractured Alchemy. Parwaz installations were subsequently created for Tum Apni Karni in 2025 and Alchemy of Becoming in 2026.

The birds’ ascent suggest migration and narratives of belonging. For me as an immigrant, belonging is not a static identity but a process of continually engaging. A connection with the earth. With the energy and rhythms of creation—our place in the cosmos as part of greater consciousness. An unceasing process of healing from displacement, both internal and physical. A process of reuniting fragmented parts of oneself, and community.

© 2014-2022 Sarah Ahmad. All Rights Reserved.