oneATELIER visited Pakistani artist Zahra Mansoor on June 20th, at her studio located at POUSH in Aubervilliers, on the outskirts of Paris on June 20th , 2025.

Zahra Mansoor’s work concerns liminality—both metaphysical and physical—investigating resonances between Sufism, Western metaphysics, and Jungian theory. She explores hybridity through moments of repose and the tensions between public and private spheres, shaped by acts of revealing and concealing.

In the studio, Mansoor stretches, sculpts, and intervenes upon fabric with paint, choreographing visual tensions that articulate the interplay of concealment and exposure. Material is important in her practice as she obsesses over the illusion of desire. Velvet is decadent and guilty, muslin is flirtatiously conservative. She composes and lays paint carefully yet carelessly—her pictures emerge underwater and fragmented, convivial yet solitary. She depicts spaces are where duty and pleasure collide, where people seem to be oblivious to each other yet wanting to be known.

Mansoor’s research also considers the role of artists within social spheres, particularly drawing from New York City’s club culture of the 1970s and ’80s. In this history, she finds both parallels and antidotes to the current sociopolitical landscape in Pakistan. Despite persistent prohibition and socioeconomic unrest, a resurgence of underground culture—artist-led parties and pop-up raves—marks Karachi today. These dichotomies flow into her paintings, which transpose parallel realities to construct utopian landscapes. Her preoccupation with dualities, collective self-seeking, and the in-between draws on Jungian concepts of ego and self, which resonate deeply with the Sufi idea of *fana’a* (self-annihilation), echoing the parallels between the very different yet similarly dissident Western and Eastern social efforts themselves.

During the visit, we had the opportunity to hear about her preparations for an upcoming solo exhibition in Karachi in January 2026. We were able to discuss the development of her work-in-progress and the potential choices concerning the installation of the solo exhibition.