Drawing from her observations growing up in Karachi, Pakistan, Zahra Mansoor’s (b.2000) practice blends mysticism and textile with an expressive painterly hand to capture the liminality of the female experience. Her work is backed by a dense legacy of patriarchal inequality, cultural commodification, and hand craft observed from her upbringing. Scenes of domestic life and spiritual yearning are painted on Muslin, a textile with origins in South Asia used to drape over bodies to combat humidity, to signal ownership over the decorated female figure or to bury the fired remains of the deceased. Carpets, whose radiating poetic Sufi designs Mansoor now scouts in the windows of second hand shops in Paris, form the backdrop to women depicted in moments of private self-discovery. At the center of Mansoor’s deeply-felt practice lies her singularly evocative handle of the brush: Dense, economical bursts of paint teem with a quiet spirituality and direct the viewer to something unseen— the challenge of navigating between duty and desire, a sense of womanhood that lies somewhere between two disparate cultures.

Mansoor is currently enrolled at the Beaux-Arts de Paris in Paris, FR in the Filière Artistes & Métiers de l’exposition program (2025). She received her BFA in Art, Media & Technology from Parsons Paris (The New School) in New York, NY and Paris, FR in 2023, where she was additionally the recipient of the Student Research Award Grant in 2022. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Chawkandi Gallery, Karachi, PK (2022) and screening at the Karachi Biennale, Karachi, PK (2019). Her work has recently been included in shows at Cartels (Le Beau Monde), Paris, FR (2024); Galerie Roshana, Paris, FR (2024); Art & Charlie, Mumbai, IN (2024); ModA Curations, New York, NY (2024); Kayal, Karachi, PK (2024); Galerie D (Fondation Fiminco), Paris, FR (2023); Prieuré de Salaise sur Sanne, Isère, FR (2023); La Chaufferie (Fondation Fiminco), Paris, FR (2023). Mansoor currently lives and works in Paris, FR.

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