Mary Shalizi is an Afghan artist whose practice is centred on drawing and works on paper. Over the years, she has developed a highly personal and immediately recognisable visual language, characterised by vivid colour, intricate pattern and an extraordinary cast of figures and imagined forms.
Working intuitively with line, colour, motif and repetition, Shalizi creates densely layered compositions populated by enigmatic faces, elaborately dressed figures, birds, animals, flowers, architectural elements and fantastical creatures. Recurring symbols and decorative forms move from one drawing to another, creating connections across her work and the sense of a larger, continuously evolving visual universe.
Her imagery often appears to exist somewhere between memory and imagination. Familiar elements are transformed and recomposed, while figures can seem at once regal, theatrical, humorous and mysterious. Rather than constructing a fixed narrative, Shalizi allows each drawing to develop according to its own internal logic, inviting the viewer to discover associations and stories within it.
At the heart of her practice is a distinctive world of her own making — one in which observation, cultural memory and imagination converge through the spontaneity and intimacy of drawing.