When was the last time that a work of art held your attention so completely, everything else seemed to fall away? It happened to me recently, regarding a breathtaking miniature painting by the Brooklyn-based Pakistani artist Hiba Schahbaz.
In The Guard (2015-2025), a nude angel emerges from within the rose-colored walls of a building enveloped in diaphanous clouds and delicate blue dragons, some exhaling trails of gold pigment. Around her, a court of female guards—resplendent in meticulously rendered headpieces and shields—stands solemnly, inviting the viewer to surrender to its mesmerizing intricacy.
Growing up in Karachi, Schahbaz recalls hiding beneath her sheets, sketching tiny figures late into the night. Years later, when she attended art school at the National College of Arts in Lahore and was formally introduced to Indo-Persian miniature painting—a time-honored art form defined by painstaking detail and layered storytelling—her childhood pastime transformed into a professional preoccupation.
“The second I started painting miniatures in school, something just clicked,” Schahbaz says. “There’s so much prep work that goes into it—we’d make our own paper, brushes, and paint, and spend a week just drawing tiny lines. There was so much ritual to it. It all fit perfectly, and I knew this was what I was going to be doing for a very long time.”
Indeed, for more than 15 years, Schahbaz has cultivated a practice rooted in poetic miniature paintings that merge autobiographical and mythological elements. Over time, however, it’s expanded to include larger compositions and installations too—a number of which are on show in “Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden” at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami. Curated by Jasmine Wahi, it’s the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, and features more than 70 works exploring fantasy, heritage, and selfhood.
“At its core, the exhibition centers on the notion of a magical garden—a space of transformation, imagination, and renewal,” Wahi says. Divided into sections after the four elements—earth, air, fire, and water—the show reflects “both the natural world and the symbolic dimensions within Hiba’s practice. Presenting the show in Miami felt particularly resonant, given the city’s rich horticultural traditions and deep connection to tropical landscapes.”
In addition to a suite of intricate miniature paintings, including The Guard, a series of large-scale works highlighting Schahbaz’s interest in self-portraiture take pride of place. Mermaid Room (2025), a sprawling installation composed of cutouts of human-sized mermaids surrounded by birds, dragons, and flowers, immerses viewers in an otherworldly space. Rebirth (2025), meanwhile, a 270-degree panoramic painting commissioned specifically for the museum, features human-scale self-portraits of the artist engaging with the earth, air, fire, and water, synthesizing the exhibition’s central themes.
Self-portraiture is a defining element of Schahbaz’s oeuvre that, like her interest in miniature painting, can be traced back to her youth. “I spent a lot of time in my bedroom because my parents didn’t like me going out much after school. There was a giant mirror there, and that’s where I taught myself how to draw. I was fascinated by the human figure, but we weren’t exactly a nude-model-friendly country, so I ended up drawing myself,” Schahbaz says.
Moving from Pakistan to the United States in 2010 was a turning point, allowing Schahbaz to push beyond the rigidity of her training in miniature painting and explore larger-scale works.
“Miniature painting is hard on the body,” the artist explains. “It’s not great for your eyesight, and it’s really tough on the wrists. The kind of control watercolor requires—the way you have to move your hands so consistently—is physically demanding. So I try to space it out more, and over time, my interests have expanded and changed.”
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Still, her practice remains grounded in the traditions of miniature painting, including the use of water-based pigments and tea. “Coming from a culture where tea is central—woven into every social interaction, where even its preparation is a ritual—it felt instantly familiar,” Schahbaz says. “Painting with tea became its own ritual: boiling it, drawing out the color, inhaling the scent. It smells like home, and the hue is unmatched. No brown pigment can replicate it; it simply feels different.”
The Gathering (2018), a life-sized congregation of nude women in various poses, each a self-portrait in the likeness of Eve, uses that technique; the figures’ skin, softly rendered in black tea pigment, glows against a vivid crimson backdrop as they gaze directly at the viewer.
No matter the dimensions or material of the works, Schahbaz’s oeuvre hinges on a recurring collection of symbols: lilies, jasmine flowers, and fantastical creatures—dragons, mermaids, lions, and unicorns. “These haven’t all been part of her visual language from the beginning,” Wahi explains, “but over time, they’ve become consistent anchor points in her work.”
Schahbaz says that the creatures come from different sources—among them art history, mythology, and Sufi poetry—and serve various purposes. “The dragons feel very protective. They’re a way to transmute the energy of the female figure and the energy of whatever is happening around them,” she says. “While the lion symbolizes some sort of love.”
The figures appear unpredictably, following the intuitive, almost spiritual nature of Schahbaz’s art-making. “I believe there’s this collective consciousness we’re all tapping into—we’re all receiving the same downloads,” she says. “All you can really do is stay open enough to receive, and then choose what you want to act on.”
“Hiba Schahbaz: The Garden” is on view from November 5 to March 16, 2026, at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami.