Maliha Abidi
"Hair was a very important element of my childhood; I admired the hair of actresses in Hindi cinema and watched my aunt and my grandmother take care of their own, even as they grew older. It was a moment of bonding, and love in the domestic setting, when my aunt used to cut or oil my hair so they would become stronger. But it wasn’t about vanity or how we are perceived by others, it was a genuine love for our hair as South Asian women; it was about tradition, culture and family."
Maliha Abidi (b.1995) is a Pakistani-American multidisciplinary artist, author, and speaker
based in London. Working across painting, animation, publishing, and immersive
installations, her practice explores and challenges dominant narratives surrounding identity,
collective memory, and gender. Drawing on experiences of displacement, her research
examines how migration shapes identity and cultural memory through a feminist lens.
She is the founder of Women Rise, an initiative advocating for women’s rights and girls’
education, and BackPackX, a spatial computing platform focused on storytelling in
underserved communities. Abidi’s work has been exhibited internationally in cities including
London, New York, Paris, Karachi, and Miami, with venues such as Outernet London,
Frameless, Hanger Gallery, and Tate Modern (as part of Instagram Creator Week), as well
as her being featured in The New York Times, Forbes, BBC, and Good Morning America.
She has also collaborated with organisations including Adobe, UNHCR, charity: water, Meta,
and Snapchat.
Abidi is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, holds an MA in Contemporary Art Practice from the
Royal College of Art, and an MFA at Ruskin School of Art at the University of Oxford where
she won the Ashmoleon Vivien Leigh Prize where her work was acquired by the museum.
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Untitled Log, 2025
