The Gaze and the Beloved by Fatima Khalid
Explore Mondoir Studio
Medium: Gouache and Engraving on Metal Leaf (copper) applied to Museum Board (acid free)
Dimensions: 36.8 x 53.3 cm
Year: 2025
Price: $650.00 USD
Status: available
Inspired by the Shahnameh (The Book of Kings), this painting employs traditional South Asian miniature techniques using gouache in a contemporary manner on museum board. Metal leaf is incorporated to engrave and embed narratives that are linear yet difficult to navigate, reflecting layered histories, epic struggles, and complex storytelling.
Why collect this work?
A sharp division between saturated miniature-style painting and exposed copper leaf turns a mythic encounter into a scene split between vivid presence and partial legibility.
- Khalid’s profile reports training in miniature painting and art history. Here, that background clarifies the compact staging, patterned terrain, and carefully bounded figures, while her stated interest in observation gives the title’s “gaze” a contemporary pressure.
- A seated woman extends one hand toward a winged, horned figure, yet their eyes do not clearly meet. At right, engraved bodies and spirals remain faint against copper, making looking itself selective and incomplete.
- The documented gouache supplies dense, opaque colour, while engraving on metal leaf permits narrative lines to appear through incision rather than paint. The contrast separates immediately readable action from imagery that must be traced across the reflective field.
- Dated 2025 and described as drawing on the Shahnameh, the painting is significant for how it withholds part of its epic scene. Its divided surface makes historical narrative feel active, fragmented, and still under construction.
About the Artist
Fatima Khalid
Fatima Khalid is an artist on Mondoir Studio. Artistic discipline: painting. Based in Dubai, AE.
Nationality: Pakistani
My practice delves into the layered construction of identity in a world increasingly defined by surveillance, displacement, and digital presence.
