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Sumaya Aftab

@sumaya.aftab

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lowkey surviving on a poem 🥂
ایک ہی رخ نہ ہو تیری تصویر کا
I sculpt @by.sumayaaftab 💁‍♀️
📍Lahore 🇵🇰

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The smallest size i’ve ever attempted to sculpt in relief, almost gave up midway when i broke the pinky for the fourth time while working. I was so scared to make the mold because no second chances. Couldn’t breathe properly till i got the first cast out. Pretty proud of this one, surprised even myself

p.s. how do i tell my parents that questionable amount of screentime is not the reason my nazar is getting kamzor, but because i was staring straight for 3hrs at almost a rice grain sized pinky i had to sculpt with my breath held by @sumaya.aftab

Can i pls get lost paharon mein and skip two point five months :) by @sumaya.aftab

‘If You Let Me’ is on view at @zaalcontemporary for the show ‘The 4X6 Edit’ till 12th October by @sumaya.aftab

Gallery Zaal Contemporary presents ‘The 4X6 Edit’

You are cordially invited to the opening of the show this Thursday, 24 September 2026
Venue: IFWA House, Street 38, F-7/1, Islamabad

The show continues till 12 October 2026
@zaalcontemporary by @sumaya.aftab

We are pleased to reveal the selected artists for water.

This open call brought together a remarkable range of voices, practices, and perspectives. 👌👌
We are honoured to share this next chapter with you.

@no.35gallery

#No35Gallery #water #SelectedForExhibition #CuratedArt #ContemporaryGallery by @sumaya.aftab

Someone said keh ainak poori agyi hai iska matlab sahi bana hai. This now rests in my window with a chipped off nose, clg se ghar tak bilkul sahi salamat le gayi thi, ghar akay tor dia :)

Life-size live portrait in clay by @sumaya.aftab

Very long overdue behind the scenes of doing the set for ‘man hastam’, a lot got recorded and a lot didnt because time never spared us. What my hands remember is how dried elfy and sponge foam feels like, what my tongue remembers is cheezious ka wrap and pasta, and our feet can’t forget the endless hours spent in shahalami, beadon road, anarkali and urdu bazar, and moving stuff from 4th floor when lift decided to quit.
Troubleshooting every 3hrs, godawful amount of calculations and checklists, never ending adhesive testing and rolls of paper, a last minute panic during the play keh sohrab ki moharrr nhi mil rhi!!! Can’t forget amna aur zuha ki shaklein trying to calm me down because i thought I’ll forget the scenes…we survived it and the way the audience applauded, made everything completely worth it!! by @sumaya.aftab

How is it that more than half a year has passed since these days, out of nowhere I’m missing triennale days and i don’t even know why. I don’t even have a clear memory of whatever was happening because of the چھتیس سو cheezain i ended up getting myself into, no wonder why november felt like it lasted for three months by @sumaya.aftab

To second year sculpture studio 💌
And to my people, keh
جنھوں نے اس دل کو پری خانہ بنا رکھا تھا 🫡🧚

So i decided to illustrate some of the places from nca and mall and anarkali and around, and where i ended up in aimless wandering, which are close to my heart. Kiunke mein apne department ke ilawa (bhi) har department mein payi jaati thi, atp i should be getting three degrees, khair, starting off with second year ka sculpture studio.

All my love to this studio for carrying me all smiles, hauntingly shattered, in work panic, solitude, paet pooja, friendships, in fear and in fun & games (graduation ke baad honay wala nostalgia abhi se horha hai). Funny how a studio, that wasn’t mine feels like the most mine, that apparently I didn’t even belong to ending up belonging to me.

I had planned and was working on it just as an illustration, with no idea at all that I’d turn this into an animation in the end. And that’s maybe one of the things I love and am always surprised by, that you never know where the creative process is going to take you. And it’s the same thing that will keep you up all night with the horror of its uncertainty. Also, the way i completed it five months after i had started working on it, mujhe tau lgta hai bs ek hi banaungi aur 👉👈😔 by @sumaya.aftab

Attempted to make this with nothing but delusional belief, a few needles and a knife. Got lost in the details (obviously, who am i otherwise), and the only sign for me to stop working was when my eyes started twitching. It was a new thing for me to discover the challenges and joys of sculpting at this scale. Got to work on my beautiful muse and loved how it turned out!!

4" x 4", terracotta

#reliefsculpture #portraitinclay by @sumaya.aftab

To Love Is To Be Home

Sar-e-raah

When I think of home, it feels like something far away and deep within at the same time. As Baqi Ahmed Puri would say, ‘baaton baaton mein koi esa bhi dhoka de gya, meri dunya le gaya aur apni dunya de gaya.’
Maybe that’s how love shifts your idea of home, quietly, until one day you can no longer point to a fixed place with certainty. You realize you belong to something that moves. Now, you don’t come back to it. Rather, it follows you and comes back to you, through them. It’s not a noun anymore. It has become a verb. I can’t name it as a place or an address. A route, I guess, which blurs you into their reflection, different but same, like the sky in the ocean.
You can no longer recall what lite before them was, can’t picture it without them either. It is not what it used to be, and i don’t have a word for what it is now, and maybe that’s okay.

Acrylics on canvas
4ft x 7ft

Exhibited by: @lovelaboratorystudio
Curated by: @_ayann_ by @sumaya.aftab

Day number ‘i don’t know what’ of saying i didn’t know i could do this. I roughly mapped out the idea in my mind how i wanted the animation to look, searched up for the techniques and decided to animate for the first time on after effects, as casually as if i had been doing this all my life. Didn’t even think of a plan b, incase i couldn’t manage to achieve this

I just realised how this was last drawing assignment of my degree. Damnn. Drawing did teach me a lot about myself, khair.. coming back to this, 6 seconds into the video, and i had to do it all over again, a night before the submission. Doing one thing and finding the tutorial for next, handling the mood swings of my nazuk laptop, messing up keyframes for questionable amount of times, saving the file after each step, crisis calling my friend, I somehow still kept going without any backup plan, as if something in me knew that it’d work out

2 am and i randomly mentioned to my brother keh subah 7 bajay tak mene yeh poora krna hai, and he laughed, as if i was not already barely holding myself from breaking down, phir poori raat mene bicharay ko gun point pe apne saath bithayi rakha kiunke i needed emosanal suporrt. Khair obviously nhi hua 7 bajay tak but i did manage to submit it two minutes before the actual deadline, with a fried brain, still don’t know how

I wonder if one of the reasons i kept going was that the 3d camera path made me feel like I’m sketching graphs of equations, how i’d relive that time all over again in a heartbeat :) How satisfying it seemed to my brain, makes me wonder how i always had the best maths teacher. Didn’t know i’d find the same feeling in keyframes by @sumaya.aftab