We are happy to announce that Sophiya Khwaja (Pakistani, b. 1982) will be attending an artist residency at MacDowell, established in 1907, the nation's oldest artist residency. Notable residents include James Baldwin, Faith Ringgold, and Georgia O'Keefe among many others.
At MacDowell, Khwaja's focus will be on one of her ongoing projects The Taste of Thought and Memory. The surface of every shape forms a landscape, the human body being no exception. For me, the body also encapsulates another kind of landscape, an internal one.
The inspiration for this project is deeply personal, owing to my belief that humanity shares a single spectrum of thought, feeling and emotion. We are hamdard (Urdu: of one pain, a single emotion), a quality that allows for a profound collective understanding of each other’s unique experiences. Toying with the idea of the human psyche as a landscape, the work maps out inner territories, resulting in scenery somewhere between a recognizable landscape and the fantastical, each piece traversing different memories and emotions.
At MacDowell, Khwaja intends to bring this project to a close, aiming to finish the remaining works she has planned for the series.
January 16, 2026
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