Laila Majid and Inaam Zafar discuss metaphor, materiality and the quiet dramas of everyday life in ‘Body Quotidian’, a two-person exhibition curated by Raja’a Khalid at Sharjah Art Foundation.
28 July 2026
Bringing together recent sculptures, photographs and paintings, ‘Body Quotidian’ places the practices of London-based Laila Majid and Lahore-based Inaam Zafar into an intimate conversation around the body as a site of memory, perception and metaphor. Curated by Raja’a Khalid for Sharjah Art Foundation, the exhibition explores how domestic spaces, familiar objects and subtle shifts of light can evoke the body’s presence without fully revealing it. Moving between play, desire, grief and decay, the works foreground surfaces, silhouettes and material traces, suggesting that embodiment is shaped as much by atmosphere and gesture as by physical form. In conversation with ART AFRICA, Majid and Zafar reflect on ambiguity as an artistic language, the emotional resonance of the everyday, and how materials ranging from latex and mirrors to painterly pigments become vessels for touch, time and transformation.
Suzette Bell-Roberts: ‘Body Quotidian’ brings your practices into conversation through shared concerns with metaphor, materiality and the human body, despite your distinct visual languages. How did this dialogue unfold, and what did you discover about your work through the other’s proximity?
Laila Majid: The dialogue was initiated by Raja’a, who put our works together for this show. Two-person shows are quite intimate- our works are in such close proximity, sharing a space. It was lovely to show alongside Inaam as his paintings provided a new context for me to place my work within. I was particularly interested, for example, in the way Inaam’s paintings slowly begin to shift, or become destabilised as your eyes adjust to the work in front of you.
Inaam Zafar: I think there is some sense of resonance in the systems of depiction both of us employ in our works. In my case, the referential framework must be the photograph my paintings imply. Also, the oscillation between familiar and the abstract, and most of the inspiration is coming from the immediate surroundings and the exploration of the capacity of an object to yield meaning or extend meaning, a property akin to poetry. When there is a build- up towards a project, one often takes a leap from thinking in visuals to thinking in words.
Across the exhibition, the body is often implied rather than directly represented, appearing through traces, objects, surfaces and atmospheres. What emerges when the body is approached through absence instead of depiction?
LM: The body in my work is largely abstracted or speculative; I think this creates a sense of openness and possibility. If I depicted the body in full, in a way that was concrete and fixed, my work would probably function in a very different way.
IZ: I think sometimes ambiguity animates the image. The works inhabit their own agency and meaning, beyond the control of the proprietor, which I find quite uplifting when it happens with my work. I think the body being ‘implied’ rather than directly depicted is even more symbolic yet liberating and selfless in a manner.
Domestic interiors, ordinary objects and fleeting encounters become charged with emotional and psychological significance in your works. What draws you to the everyday as a site for memory, vulnerability and desire?
LM: I like working with objects that are recognisable, that I have a connection to or relationship with because I use or encounter them on a daily basis. I enjoy experimenting with objects like this, testing how far I can reduce or change something, whilst trying to retain a connection to its original form or function.
IZ: I guess it is the inevitability of the implicit around us. Sometimes, fleeting afternoon light falls strangely in a corner of the room, and our mind starts forming connections or transports us elsewhere. Or an object appears to be less definitive than before, and something about it lingers in the mind. This ambiguity holds potential to expand meaning, and I paint to cultivate it. I think it is an exercise of seeing more than anything else. I also paint to personalise such experiences, for the pleasures of it.
Laila, your sculptural and photographic works hold moments suspended between revelation and concealment, while Inaam, your paintings transform familiar forms into ambiguous images that resist certainty. How important is ambiguity as a strategy for inviting viewers into the work rather than directing interpretation?
LM: It feels important because I think it allows the viewer to slow down, to spend some time with the work. I would hope it slows down the pace at which the work is consumed or digested.
IZ: It is the urge to resist the static depiction with singular meaning more than a definitive strategy. What I came to realise by speaking to people whenever I exhibited is that it is a projection of their own associations and experiences in the work. The painted image becomes culturally ambiguous too, which I find unifying in a transnational sense.
Material plays a central role in this exhibition, from latex, mirrors and faux fur to subtle painterly surfaces that evoke decay, residue and touch. Through these materials, how do your chosen materials carry meaning beyond representation and embody bodily experience?
LM: They are materials which hold traces of touch, of activity. Latex is very porous—unless it is properly cleaned, it will be stained by marks of touch caused by the body of the wearer (their sweat, natural oils on the skin, etc.). So it becomes an index of touch. The blinds in the show are covered with smudges, made by my hands through the making process.
IZ: I am increasingly more interested in the semiotics of the very materials that constitute my paintings, especially the pigments I often use. I use bone whites and blacks, calcined using animal bones, or Capuut Mortem, a shade of violet that historically came from industrial waste. I try to use pigments unadulterated to keep their individual character.
‘Body Quotidian’ moves between playfulness and grief, intimacy and estrangement, suggesting that everyday life is never emotionally neutral. How do you navigate these shifting emotional registers without letting one dominate?
LM: The works speak to specific points on an emotional register; the chaser sculptures are light and playful, whereas the steam works or the blinds feel more muted. Within the show, this balance is a testament to Raja’a’s curation of our works.
IZ: I think sensing emotional capacity in a subject, object, or image has always been the principal driver for me in order to relate to my own work. But the process of painting shifts between physical and psychological, goes mano a mano. There are lapses where mental detachment from reading into the image succeeds, and the concerns are reduced to the material only. The finality of the work almost never implies a single emotion for me; it remains malleable contextually.
The exhibition quietly reflects on how contemporary technologies continue to reshape perceptions of youth, beauty, and truth, while insisting on the persistence of the physical body. How do you see your work responding to this mediated relationship between lived experience and digital representation?
LM: All the photographic works in the show are shot on my iPhone. My phone has an undeniable role in my day-to-day. Because this is such an immediate and accessible way of taking pictures, I think it makes the photographs feel quite intimate, but also quite anonymous and nondescript. I’m not sure if it is useful to separate a lived experience from the digital; it feels much more blended in this case. The device used to take the photos is so embedded in my daily life.
IZ: I think we increasingly experience the world through images that are filtered, edited and endlessly circulated, and that inevitably changes how we understand ourselves. My work doesn’t try to reject that reality, but it is interested in what remains outside of those mediated images. The body, for me, is not an idealised image or a fixed identity; it is something vulnerable, perishable and constantly carrying traces of memory, time and experience.
Rather than presenting the body as fixed or complete, ‘Body Quotidian’ suggests that it is continually shaped by memory, architecture, light, ritual and perception. What conversations do you hope visitors continue after leaving the exhibition, especially about how bodies inhabit and are transformed by everyday life?
LM: Works in the show unfold to you gradually, so I hope this slowing down in pace, in terms of how the exhibited works are consumed, is something that those who have visited the show can keep in mind after leaving the exhibition.
IZ: If there is one conversation I hope continues after the exhibition, it is about paying closer attention to the unnoticed. The everyday is never neutral; it quietly shapes how we remember, how we move, how we relate to one another, and ultimately how we understand ourselves. In a time when experience is increasingly mediated and accelerated, there is value in recognising the body’s capacity to absorb, resist and transform through these ordinary encounters. For me, that attentiveness is both an artistic and a human practice.
This exhibition is on view at Gallery 6, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah, until 20 September 2026
