BIOGRAPHY

Mehmil Nadeem (b. 1996) in Multan is a multidisciplinary artist whose work is inspired by her ongoing journey of critiquing the reliability of memory as an archive through a unique image-making technique, which is inspired by her personal and collective archives. She completed her degree in BFA Visual Arts from Beaconhouse National University in 2019, from where she passed with Distinction in her department. She was also a recipient of Dean's Honor List and merit-based scholarship during her time there. She has been a part of multiple group shows taken place in Pakistan and was also a selected resident at Tasweerghar artist residency, 2019. She has been selected for 16TH EMERGING TALENT 2020, VM Art Gallery at Karachi and is currently training in ‘Multani Kashigari’, a traditional painting technique from the Institute of Blue Pottery Development, Multan. She is currently working between Multan and Lahore.

ARTIST STATEMENT

‘Memory is like Wikipedia, you can change it, so can others’- Elizabeth Loftus


We believe memory to be one of the most vital notions of our existence that is responsible for building our identity and the way we look upon the world. But according to my research and personal observation, memories are highly complexed, fragile and disrupted by each other. It is an ephemeral language that is continually renewed.
My practice revolves around this unstable, complex phenomenon, questioning it's reliability as an archive and the way it is controlled by external influences and time. The transformation within the narratives I reconstruct using different mediums and processes, allows me to reinvent the past in a way that it connects the personal to wider audiences. Another crucial aspect of my practice is the interest in kinetics and the making of mechanical photo sculptures, which further becomes a critique on the relationship of man and machine in today's time, where memories no longer belong exclusively to us.