NEXT oneATELIER
Zahra Mansoor
June 20th, 2025

oneATELIER is pleased to announce that our next visit will be with Pakistani artist Zahra Mansoor on June 20th, at her studio located at POUSH in Aubervilliers, on the outskirts of Paris.

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 will have the opportunity to hear about her preparations for an upcoming solo exhibition in Karachi in January 2026. We will be able to discuss the development of her work-in-progress and the potential choices concerning the installation of the solo exhibition.

Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan—where public and private life often interfere with each other, limiting individual autonomy, especially for women and queer people—Mansoor moved to Paris at the age of 19 and has since practiced between the two cities. She graduated from the Paris campus of the Parsons School of Design in 2023, and is currently partaking in the curatorial practices “Filière” at the Beaux-Arts de Paris (the Filière Artistes & Métiers de l’exposition.) Being immersed in the queer Parisian scene, hosting parties, producing events, and jumping between unconventional residencies, is a world apart from Karachi society. Her personal shapeshifting and compartmentalisation, echo the themes of her research.

Contemporary Pakistan exists in contradiction—and for many in its diaspora, it is a mirage. By inhabiting the interstices of self-perception and collective memory, Mansoor’s work compounds an urgent dialogue on where we come from and where we are going.

Mansoor has worked with entities ranging from the Silencio club to the musée d'Orsay, and exhibited at Naranjo 141, Mexico City, Art & Charlie, Mumbai, with ModA Curations NYC, the Fondation Fiminco, Paris, and Chawkandi Gallery, Karachi, amongst others.