Thank you to all of the Michael Marks team and the biggest thank you to Chris Riddell, the judge for the 2025-26 Award for Illustration. It is a great honour to win the award and to know that something in my drawings spoke to you.
I received an email from Emma Bolland, from Intergraphia Press, asking me to ring her because she had some VERY good news about my debut pamphlet Godhuma and the Michael Marks Award.
My feeling on hearing the news? Pure absolute euphoria, followed my initial tears of joy.
The pamphlet represents a psychospiritual journey blurring linear time. The illustrations and poetry that forms Godhuma; the breathing of the earth, are a conversation between the neolithic people of Mehrgarh and myself.
I am a London born and based artist and writer. I love this city, it constantly morphs giving an endless source of inspiration. I also belong to a lineage of indigenous voices, for whom land – her physical features and characteristics – shapes our psyche. My parents come from part of the world called Balochistan, it is located in Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. My identity is explored in this pamphlet and the intergraphic process becomes a tool of self and cultural reclamation.
Balochi culture has a rich tradition of poetry that has over centuries been inherited orally, through spoken word. My father was a writer and poet. For me he represented a living part of Balochistan, he was a mountain, a tree and the giants who supposedly roamed this part of the world. In 2022 when my dad passed away, I felt this loss akin to the loss of home. In my sadness there was an alchemy drawing me to find this landscape within me, I searched for it and gave it a voice.
Mehrgarh the place of inspiration for this body of work, is in the modern day province of Balochistan in Pakistan. Mehrgarh was discovered by the French archaeologist husband and wife, Jean Francois Jarrige and Catherine Jarrige in 1974 and was further explored by their team. It is cited as one of the oldest neolithic civilisations in South Asia and a precursor to the Indus Valley civilization in Pakistan.
The people of Mehrgarh would have been some of the earliest human settlers in the Indian subcontinent. These people were farmers, harvesting grains and building grain stores, the word Godhuma means wheat in Sanskrit.
The people were also innovators and potters. They made what some have called, goddess fertility figures. I call them the Mehrgarh clay figures and in them I saw the fingerprints of ancient Mehrgarh and echoes of my own body. In the shape of their large eyes, I saw my own. In these clay women, I found a woman, removed from western capitalism. I connected with a world where women were as revered as land. In the clay figures I had a feeling I met, the oldest part of myself.
The interdisciplinary forms presented in this pamphlet speak of existence, where unheard voices embrace as a collective over centuries of time.
In 2024, the poet and writer Sascha Akhtar told me about an asemic poetry course she was running with the Poetry School. I enrolled and ideas for the Mehrgarh script took shape.
When we looked at the Harappan inscriptions (a prompt on the course), I realised Mehrgarh had no script but it had a bold visual dialogue in images. This is how my alphabet evolved. It was inspired by phonetic sounds in languages that represent both of my homes, English and Balochi. I thought of the way my vocal chords move when letters are sounded, I imagined these as shapes and began to draw them. I am not a linguist but this process was a way of recording my experience of language and expression as a human being living between different languages. The poem Godhuma is written in English and includes words for wheat in English and Balochi.
I immersed myself in exploring images of the mother goddess figurines from the Indus and Mehrgarh. I found the clay figurines on antiques auctions, for sale on websites and in some of the greatest museum collections in the world. There are two seated mother goddess figurines in the Metropolitan Museum of Art – I drew them and they inspired my poem ‘Returning’.
What struck me was this history was not readily accessible, or known to people with Balochi or Pakistani heritage or to its diaspora. There was a void. These clay figures representing precious depictions of the life of our early ancestors made by their hands – were far from home. I wanted to communicate with the ancient people of Mehrgarh, to record their innovation. I feel this project is still at the start.
The Mehrgarh script I have created is my response to the representation of Mehrgarh by its indigenous people nine thousand years ago. The drawings are an act of reclamation.
My forever thanks is to Sascha Akhtar who submitted my work to Intergraphia. Sascha was my mentor and she had an immediate and almost psychic understanding of my work. Sascha knew about my love of art and encouraged me to explore multidisciplinary poetry and we spoke about language as a decolonial tool. I am very lucky to have worked with someone who heard my voice.
Intergraphia has an open call for submissions every year which includes nominations from established authors who have published with them. Sascha Ahktar’s ‘∑Void Song∩ = Futurepast Sequence Of…’ was part of Intergraphia’s Series 2. Sascha nominated me for the Series 4 publication and I had no idea.
Working with Emma Bolland and Rachel Smith from Intergraphia was a dream. Both women are artists, writers and educators dedicated to promoting transgraphic writing and inclusive intersectional publishing.
We had an initial meeting where I explained what Godhuma was about and we discussed the process of the pamphlet. Rachel explained that she would be happy for me to send her my drawing and writing and see how the work was progressing. I wanted to develop a full draft before sharing and by the summer of 2025 I had submitted my first draft. Rachel was patient and helped me with page lay ups and adaptations. There was ongoing communication between Emma, Rachel and I. My sister helped me to proof the final drafts and we were ready. Emma and Rachel asked me if I would like an A3 centre spread pull out – how could I refuse? We met online to talk about what the poster might consist of and decided on the illustration of the head of the goddess clay figure on page 1, with the Mehrgarh script behind and a poem.
Emma and Rachel’s care of my work, is evident in the quality and the final outcome of the pamphlet. Both women are inspirational and Intergraphia is a labour of love championing the transgraphic process and the art of the printed pamphlet.
Many artists inspire me, some are: Barbara Hepworth, Frank Bowling, Akram Dost Baloch, Zaha Hadid, Frank Auerbach, Helen de Sybel, David Lynch, Rachel Jones, Henrietta Dubrey, Florence Hutchings, Sohaila Sokhanvari and Eduardo Chillida’s drawings and sculptures.
I’m intuitively drawn to human mark making – the depth of line on a surface made by a person contains a magical language. This need to express our lived experience, by making a mark in any art form, or highlight what is missing (even silence and absence like the emptied resting place of the people of Mehrgarh) is a sign of our existence.
An interesting thing happened to me. It was July of 2025, I had put my draft for Godhuma together. I was walking past one of the Cork Street galleries and a photograph on one of the gallery walls made me stop and look. It was a woman’s body outlined on earth. The outline tapered into a sort of conical shape – just like the seated mother goddesses of Mehrgarh. Seeing the stylised form of this female body on land was reminiscent of the neolithic clay figures of Mehrgarh that were etched into my visual memory. The photograph struck a chord. I went inside the building – it was the Ordovas Gallery. The gallerist was engaging and passionate about the artist and told me the photograph was by Anna Mendieta – a Cuban American who was exiled to the states in her youth. They explained that this untitled piece was part of Mendieta’s larger body of work exploring womanhood, exile and identity. I was overwhelmed by this find. I told the gallerist about my pamphlet and the Mehrgarh female clay figurines and what they represented in terms of my internal landscape. She told me to bring my pamphlet in when it was published – I will do one of these days.
I found out Mendieta passed away in 1985 – I wish I could have met and spoken to her.
Going back to the main question, the ultimate inspiration for Godhuma, are the artists of the Mehrgarh civilization.
The Mehrgarh clay figurines – I aim to reunite each one in my art.
I feel I’m always starting out. My advice would be, believe in your inner voice and give it life.
