Figure, Ground: Fatima Haider

Fatima Haider’s practice is rooted in an ongoing engagement with abstraction. Each work begins from a point of reference—whether a form, an image, or a specific colour. Initially grounded, only to become increasingly unmoored through the process of making.

A recurring motif in her work is the interplay between camouflage and nature, the organic and the industrial. These seemingly opposed forces are folded into one another, generating both visual and conceptual tension.

The horizontal line functions as a foundational element, establishing orientation and suggesting both a beginning and a boundary. From this point, resistant spaces emerge: spaces that are confrontational, unyielding, and deliberately with holding.

Haider’s surfaces alternately absorb and reflect, often invoking flatness and negating one-point perspective to evoke the fleeting nature of perception. Her works gesture toward moments of passing, of glimpsing something in motion only to leave behind a residue that lingers beyond the moment of encounter.