Assemblage of Time Past

With today’s overconsumption of imagery and information, this body of work slows our mind down, taking the viewer back into the region’s yesteryears – a realm of tactile memories.
The entry point to her work is that of an old photograph at a glance, their edges fragmented, irregular like memory itself. They are delicate, yet demand attention, even concentration.On speculation, we witness the past not as personal history, but as a collective one, spanning generations and regions. Saleena Shahid has taken them a step further, rendering them sacred to her family’s history by preserving them in paint, and its thickened texture, a medium beyond the photograph.
The faces she depicts are faceless, yet complete as portraits – simultaneously personal, private, and across Asia perhaps. For some, looking at the past may be sensitive; for others, a source of comfort, a sense of kinship.
Certain works capture a frozen space of intimacy; the embrace, for instance, resonates with viewers as warmth. “Daddy”, a figure of elegance and patience, embodies the weight of generations but a lightness of being.
Group shots to commemorate and celebrate events, a selected segregation of the genders, was it always the norm?Her most recent works dissolve in a poignant combination of fading imagery and texture, much like the way distant memories gradually fade in our minds.
These pieces invite us to pause in a moment where information and visuals overwhelm us, evoking a sense of loss – of family structures, architecture, and an era gone by. Is Saleena Shahid aiming to preserve the past, or revive what’s lost?

The show continues till February 14, 2026