People of the Garáṇ

In June 2025 Haseebah exhibited her second solo show, this time with Ort gallery, in collaboration with MIAH Foundation exploring Azad Kashmiri diasporic life titled People of the Garáṇ. The exhibition was curated and conceived by Aaisha Akhtar and Dr Farah Nazir.

People of the Garáṇ is an exploration of Azad Kashmiri stories, memories, and cultural practices that have existed beyond public records and archives. This exhibition invited the public to reflect on both real and imagined space between the village and the city; from an agrarian past to a post-industrial present; and the ways in which rural village life textures diasporic geographies and peoples in urban Britain. 

Inspired by the artefacts from MIAH’s collection, as well as everyday images, art practices, and traditions from her upbringing, Haseebah employed print, photography, textiles, illumination, sculpture and mixed media to trace connections between labour, care, migration, craft, and the remaking of home. Through these forms, Haseebah’s work draws attention to the internal and external worlds of men and women in her family across generations: their bodily labour, emotional endurance, and inherited practices. The artworks offer a way of understanding and connecting the Azad Kashmiri community to their own memories and traditions.    

The exhibition was a contemplation on space, not just as a physical entity, but as something lived, remembered, and remade - a notion that is intrinsic to the cultural legacy of a community whose traditions and practices are often understood in form but not in meaning. 

Ultimately, People of the Garáṇ is a visual account imbued with tenderness and a desire to celebrate, interrogate and document the cultural legacy and textures of Azad Kashmiri diasporic life.