Alishba Binte Faysal (b. 2000, Quetta, Pakistan) is a Karachi-based visual artist specializing in painting. She holds a Bachelor’s in Fine Arts (Painting) from the National College of Arts, Lahore.

Her practice revolves around memory, process, and materiality. Working primarily with oil paints and charcoal, she engages in an intuitive process of layering, erasing, and reworking. Drawing from old family photographs of herself, her parents, friends, and familiar spaces, her work becomes a way of tracing where she comes from and how those histories shape identity. These photographs act as both personal and collective archives, holding stories that transform as they pass through her painterly process.

Her works have been exhibited in Lahore at the Degree Show 2024, National College of Arts; Tagh’eer Creative Space; Ejaz Art Gallery; Numaish Gah; O Art Space; and Ocean Art Gallery, and in Karachi at ArtScene Gallery. She currently lives and works in Karachi.

Artist Statement:

My work is an ongoing dialogue between memory, material, and process. My references come from old photographs of me, my family, friends, and familiar spaces and serve as a starting point to explore belonging. I am particularly interested in how an image turns itno my work once it goes through my process of layering, erasing and reworking. In revisiting these photographs, I am tracing where I come from and how that shapes my identity.

I majorly work with oil paints and charcoal, making and unmaking, until the image undergoes multiple transformations. This process is intuitive and never the same twice, and guided by what the work itself demands. This spontaneity allows me to respond with both material and emotion, letting the work transform until it is able to carry the weight of the memory.