Artist
Sehba Sarwar
Via Karachi, Pakistan
Sehba Sarwar is a writer, multidisciplinary artist and activist. She moves between the city of her birth, Karachi, Pakistan, where she spent the first half of her life in a home filled with artists, activists and educators, and her adopted city, Houston, where she has recreated a community similar to the one where she was raised. Sarwar’s work tackles women’s issues and displacement. Her first novel, Black Wings, was published in 2004 (Alhamra Publishing). Her essays, poems and short stories have appeared in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines in Canada, India, Pakistan and the United States, in publications including The New York Times Sunday Magazine, Callaloo and Asia Magazine, while her video/art installations have been exhibited in Pakistan, Egypt, India and the United States.
Through Voices Breaking Boundaries (VBB), a grassroots arts organization she co-founded 13 years ago and where she serves as Artistic Director, Sarwar directs and creates new work for VBB's living room art productions. A lifetime member of the Macondo Writers’ Workshop, Sarwar is listed on Texas Commission on the Arts Touring Artist Roster. From 2012-14 Sarwar serves as Artist-in-Residence for the Mitchell Center for the Arts at the University of Houston, where she is working on a project entitled What is Home?
