Sarah Ahmad

Lives and works in Tulsa, OK, USA

Artist statement

Born in Lahore, Pakistan, and based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, I make work rooted in my own experience of displacement. Displacement scatters us, breaking us from the ground that holds our lives together. My practice is a search for that ground: a gathered, unified state of being, found in the land and within ourselves. I trace the recurring patterns that connect us across nature, the human body, the cosmos, and sacred geometries, alongside the patterns of colonial violence and land extraction that fragment and destroy. Through a range of media and site-specific installations, I gather what has been scattered into new wholes, working with nature's regenerative power and visual wonders toward belonging, renewal, and hope. My diverse projects are often united by a commitment to healing and renewal with nature. From meditative walks and forest bathing to intricate, cosmological collages, I create settings designed for meditation and wonder—often reframing sites marked by trauma, destruction, and displacement. For site-specific artworks, I begin with a deep and sometimes challenging embodied immersion: hiking through the northern mountains in my native Pakistan, and across the diverse geological landscapes of my adopted home state of Oklahoma. “With the eye of a gleaner and the spirit of a documentarian,” I record evidence of environmental destruction, gathering up driftwood, tree bark, and other discarded detritus along the way. These broken and orphaned forms, mixed up and...

Artwork