{"id":20393,"date":"2026-01-20T15:13:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:13:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/interview-artist-sanie-bonakdaris-wild-motherhood\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T15:13:49","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T15:13:49","slug":"interview-artist-sanie-bonakdaris-wild-motherhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nationalgunowner.org\/index.php\/2026\/01\/20\/interview-artist-sanie-bonakdaris-wild-motherhood\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Artist Sani\u00e9 Bonakdari\u2019s Wild Motherhood"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Sani\u00e9 Bokhari, All My Friends<\/em>, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Pakistani-born, Brooklyn-based artist Sani\u00e9 Bokhari<\/a> has long grappled with the notion of a life lived in between. Through her paintings, she has consistently translated dichotomies into suspended, liminal works shaped by her experience of being born in Pakistan and then coming of age and becoming a woman in the radically different environment of the United States.<\/p>\n

\n<\/section>\n

Her diasporic grief and longing is a source of both tension and inspiration in Bokhari\u2019s practice. Her creativity feeds on a desire born from lack and never fully fulfilled: not a simple nostalgia for a place that can be reclaimed, but a desire that orbits an absence, sustained by memory, fantasy and projection rather than resolution. Artistic practice becomes a way to re-inscribe herself within that fracture on her own terms, producing meaning where continuity has been broken.<\/p>\n

That paradox became even more urgent when Bokhari became a mother last year, giving birth in a place and culture far from her homeland\u2014a geography from which her daughter will remain irreversibly estranged. These reflections shape the new body of work she now presents at Rajiv Menon Contemporary in Los Angeles, marking a significant evolution not only in her visual language but also in the artistic and personal consciousness it embodies.<\/p>\n

\"The\"The
Sanie\u0301 Bokhari. Photo: Ahad Subzwari<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bokhari\u2019s earlier solo show in New York was conceived while she was pregnant, during a period marked by waiting, expectation and profound introspection, as she observed her body and her sense of self shifting. Her first solo exhibition on the West Coast, by contrast, arrives in the first year of her child\u2019s life\u2014after a stretch in which deep personal change had time to settle and permeate the work. \u201cIt feels like such a big shift. With the last body of work, I was still in that space, but I think I reached a point where my priorities shifted so much that I just let go,\u201d Bokhari tells Observer. \u201cOnce you\u2019ve lived in two different places, that sense of being split never really goes away. You\u2019re always in this constant in-between space. There was something within me that truly felt the displacement and mourning and I think that feeling started to fade once I fully committed to the work. Somehow, becoming a mom gave me that courage. You become much more aware of everything within and outside yourself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her paintings have long been inhabited by feminine, ghostly and diaphanous presences, often suspended in liquid, porous spaces\u2014hovering between time and place, between memory and hallucination. These apparitions evoke a distant world that remains deeply embedded in her imaginary and cultural language.<\/p>\n

\"Painting\"Painting
Sani\u00e9 Bokhari, Face in the Frequency<\/em>, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Working primarily on canvas and paper, Bokhari has gradually developed her own interpretation of ancient miniature painting. Drawing from South Asian and Pakistani mythological and religious narratives, her sinuous graphic line and dense symbolic language remain deeply rooted in those traditions\u2014even as they are reimagined through a distinctly contemporary lens. Her palette, once limited to graphite grays and deep blues, began to feature deeper reds only recently. In this new body of work, however, the vibrant intensity of reds and oranges takes over, infusing the paintings with an entirely new energy.<\/p>\n

As they were installing the show, her gallerist, Rajiv Menon, told her he had quite literally watched her discover color before his eyes. That comment stayed with her. \u201cMoving from large graphite drawings into this warm, almost fevered palette of oranges and rusts has felt like a real transformation, and it\u2019s especially meaningful that it\u2019s happening now, during the first year of motherhood and in my daughter\u2019s first year of life,\u201d Bokhari shares. \u201cThere\u2019s something about that period that is so heightened, raw and sensorial and color became the only way to hold all of that intensity.\u201d<\/p>\n

A key element guiding this shift was the rug\u2014a symbolic presence central to both miniature painting and daily life. It appeared prominently in her solo exhibition at Swivel. \u201cThere was a piece with the tiger and the rug. The woman was transforming into a tiger, and the tiger was transforming into a woman. It was cyclical. In my head, it felt like the cycle of life\u2014who comes first,\u201d she recalls. \u201cI spent a lot of time with that piece, and through it I started finding something I wanted to hold onto. That was the moment I thought, this is where I want to go with the next chapter.\u201d<\/p>\n

From there, Bokhari began researching the tiger figure and its symbolic weight in South Asian miniature painting. \u201cThere\u2019s so much there. It opened up an entire world,\u201d she says. While the tiger is generally a positive symbol, it is often ornamental and stylized. \u201cYou see it in rugs, as part of the background; it\u2019s never really foregrounded. Even in battle scenes, tigers remain largely decorative, despite their immense symbolic power within South Asian culture and history.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Square\"Square
Sani\u00e9 Bokhari, Skin Contact<\/em>, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bokhari sought to challenge this hierarchy, sensing that something fundamental about feminine energy had long been repressed. \u201cThere\u2019s so much power in that image, and I wanted to bring it to the forefront. The palette, the scale\u2014I wanted to really run with it and make it my own,\u201d she explains. \u201cI\u2019m using references from miniature painting, but you would never see pastel, charcoal or large-scale formats in traditional miniatures. That\u2019s my version of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The process demanded extensive experimentation; she had to find the confidence and courage to assert her own way of seeing and to rework her cultural inheritance. It unfolded alongside a deeper reckoning with who she was at that moment in her life, in relation to her first child, her family\u2019s past and the world around her.<\/p>\n

Nostalgia and longing have always shaped Bokhari\u2019s work, but so too have redemption and regeneration. Her paintings have long expressed the concerns of a young woman navigating secular traditions, familial and social expectations and a persistent yearning for spiritual anchorage within the alienation of contemporary urban life. In this new body of work, she claims a space for creative reimagination\u2014reactivating a symbolic and mythological universe to keep it alive in a globalized present.<\/p>\n

Motherhood pushed these questions further. For Bonakdari, the challenge became how to raise a child who will not grow up in Pakistan. \u201cMy daughter is going to be so removed from the language, the history, the culture I came from. That was the first thing that hit me,\u201d she says. \u201cWhat is that going to be like? How will she be disconnected from it, or still attached to it?\u201d It is a radical displacement. \u201cI was displaced, but she\u2019s going to be removed from that displacement itself,\u201d she reflects. \u201cI felt this responsibility\u2014to teach her everything, to keep culture alive. To keep a child alive, literally. I didn\u2019t know how to do that. The first two months were so hard. That\u2019s why I went back to work so early. I felt like I had to\u2014otherwise I wouldn\u2019t survive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Large\"Large
Sani\u00e9 Bokhari, Winter Baby Facing East<\/em>, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At that point, painting became a hybrid space\u2014one in which different cultures and temporalities could coexist. \u201cThe only way I\u2019ve been able to hold on to that place is through history and through creating my own universe,\u201d she says. By building a symbolic lexicon, she found a way to give form to something that inevitably becomes hybrid. If earlier works leaned more strictly toward the miniature tradition, these paintings are openly Pakistani-American.<\/p>\n

When she returned to the studio, the first thing she painted was a rug\u2014without knowing exactly why or how. \u201cI was pulling from what I used to do, but it didn\u2019t feel possible anymore. It was like picking up where you left yourself, only to realize that person no longer exists. I couldn\u2019t just continue. I had to start again as someone else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Titled How to Hold a Wild Thing<\/i>, the exhibition frames motherhood as unfamiliar terrain defined by risk, wonder and adaptation. The works unfold alongside Bokhari\u2019s process of learning a new being, her daughter, as well as a newly transformed self. Encountering her child, deciphering that early human life as it begins to engage the world, felt like meeting an entirely different species: unpredictable, frenetic and driven by untamable curiosity. That primal creative energy\u2014the first encounter with the world\u2014became the emotional ground from which the works emerged.<\/p>\n

Yet many of the paintings also confront the profound isolation of the postpartum experience and the sensation of irreversible change. \u201cThere\u2019s something about giving birth\u2026 I really wanted that sense of the circle to be present,\u201d Bokhari says. In one small painting, she depicts herself holding her own face. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s a deeply isolating experience. You\u2019re kind of alone in it, even though it\u2019s the most universal thing imaginable,\u201d she reflects, recalling how difficult it felt even to ask her own mother for guidance. That tension between universality and isolation runs throughout the exhibition.<\/p>\n

Bokhari spent months returning to that first painting. \u201cThe number of times I went back into that work was insane. I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever changed a piece that much,\u201d she says. \u201cWhen you return to the studio after something so transformative, you\u2019re left asking: what just happened? How do I even articulate this? You\u2019re a different person.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Large\"Large
Installation view: Sani\u00e9 Bokhari\u2019s \u201cHow to Hold A Wild Thing\u201d at Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Los Angeles, 2026. Copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This body of work became a site of reconciliation and a way of understanding both her daughter and herself. That is why the doubling and multiplying figures that have long populated Bokhari\u2019s paintings remain present. These shadowy presences function both as projections of the self and as manifestations of the multiple identities that coexist within a single individual, resisting any fixed or singular process of individuation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was this constant experience of seeing myself in her while also feeling detached from my former self,\u201d Bokhari says. When she returned to Pakistan a few months postpartum, the experience proved emotionally complex yet generative. \u201cI made a lot of work there,\u201d she adds, referencing the painful realization that she belonged but not entirely. \u201cWhen you go back to your own country, you feel you belong\u2014but also that you don\u2019t anymore. You\u2019re stuck in that in-between. Before, it still felt like returning to my childhood home. At some point, that sensation breaks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The tiger\u2019s striped skin becomes a filter through which to read the primordial wilderness of these existential moments. In those sinuous patterns reside the emotional intensity of a phase in which everything feels raw and new\u2014for parent and child alike. The stripes seem to vibrate with the rhythm of life itself, marking time, transformation and necessary change.<\/p>\n

In a few rare works featuring a male figure, Bokhari also reflects on how a partner becomes a stranger again while learning to inhabit fatherhood. Through multiplication, she maps the many possible ways of being present within this new existential dimension.<\/p>\n

\"Large\"Large
Sani\u00e9 Bokhari, Tender Beast<\/em>, 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Circularity remains central, suggesting the ongoing possibility of return and transformation. In Origin Dream<\/i>, an orange floor-based textile work inspired by both a Persian rug and her daughter\u2019s play mat, Bokhari recreates the possibility of a playful first encounter with the world\u2014that initial push toward discovery that activates the imaginative force often lost with adulthood. \u201cYou lose that sense of play over time,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s like when you go somewhere like Black Rock City; it\u2019s about bringing that back. A jumping castle in the desert somehow makes sense.\u201d<\/p>\n

That playful, creative energy prompted Bokhari to experiment with handblown glass for the first time, creating a series of vessels and sculptures where the idea of continuous metamorphosis finds even more fluid expression through the alchemical transformation of matter. She collaborated with her cousin, Ayla Bokhari\u2014the only family member she has nearby and her only remaining tie to Pakistan. Though their styles differ, Bokhari drew inspiration directly from Bokhari\u2019s paintings. The result was an entirely new process and medium, but also a deeply personal collaboration that felt like a true family affair.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s been most moving is seeing how people are resonating with the work as an honest portrayal of the emotional and physical reality of being a mother,\u201d Bokhari shares. \u201cThe tenderness, the overwhelm, the beauty and the chaos\u2026 rather than the polished, idealized version of motherhood we\u2019re constantly shown on social media.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through the symbolic and psychological density of this new body of work, Bokhari makes peace with ongoing transformation\u2014with growth as a fluid, open-ended process and with the possibility that change holds for keeping the creative imagination alive. \u201cMy idea was for the exhibition to be called \u2018For You, Aria,\u2019 because everything I\u2019m making is for you,\u201d she says\u2014acknowledging how motherhood reawakened the original creative impulse that first led her to art and to a more porous, receptive way of encountering the world.<\/p>\n

\"Circular\"Circular
Bokhari\u2019s new body of work encompasses paintings, glasswork and textiles produced in the year following the birth of her first child. Copyright the artist. Courtesy of the artist and Rajiv Menon Contemporary. Photo: Ruben Diaz<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\t\t\t\t\"Artist<\/p><\/div>\n