UNTITLED art fair

Hey friends,

I’m in Houston this week for Untitled Art Fair—the very first time they’ve brought the fair here, and it’s about time. For years, I’ve felt that Houston’s art scene is one of the most underrated in the country. From the Museum District to the diverse independent galleries scattered across the city, there’s a depth and richness to the talent showcased here.

Last year, I “stalked” Rajiv Menon over to Untitled Art Fair during Art Basel in Miami. I first heard about him through a friend in L.A. and couldn’t wait to hear him speak about his pop-up shows featuring Southeast Asian diaspora art. His talk was inspiring - listen here - and so was the fair itself. Out of all the fairs I visited that week, Untitled stood out the most. The curation felt fresh, daring, and boundary-pushing. I was especially drawn to the work of diaspora artists and the galleries championing their voices. This was the kind of art that doesn’t just decorate walls but sparks questions and lingers in the mind. I left that experience feeling like I’d witnessed something important.

Here are some of the pieces that really stood out to me:

Vigo Gallery

Ibrahim El Salahi

Silkscreen on Belgian linen



Catherine Clark Gallery

Acrylic Textile Thread on Amate Paper

Ronchini London

Thomas Allen

Leroy Neiman Center for Print Studies Columbia University

Shirin Neshat

$52k

--no image, my bad--

Bill Arnie Exhibitions

Kinderhook NY

Rajah Ali Sayed

Yossi Milo Gallery

New York

Hassan Hajjaj from Morocco

Cohju Kyoto Japan

Shinya Azuma

Oil on Canvas

$18k

Stems Gallery Brussels & Paris

Pauline Gurrier

Wool Tapestry Traditional Handmade Technique Oak Framing

Cari freedman gallery

Studio Lenca

Rajiv Memon Contemporary presents I-pop

Galerie Michael Janssen

Berlin

Gulnar Mukazhanova

Homework Miami Florida

Ilsse Peredo

(Artist on the left)

Pablo’s Birthday

New York

Kelly Lynn Jones

Acrylic, Oil, Oil stick on Canvas

Here's some additional notes from the talks I went to:

Untitled podcast Thursday Dec 5 2 pm Museums and Institutions Fostering Inclusivity

Now that there are these spaces for diaspora or immigrant communities how do you expand or market the exposure to showcase the art and culture to other communities - empathy is important. The public needs to be curious to come in.

We want to reclaim our culture and identity and show it off proudly but how do we keep it from being tokenized? How do we proudly present yet don’t go down the rabbit hole of being a warrior only. How do we balance with the more diplomatic role of an ambassadors?

Untitled Podcast 4 pm

Encounters in Art and fashion between India and the west

Going to spaces in the west only shows ancient art not the contemporaries. A lot of emerging artists in India but hard to get their work out in an international level

And that's all for now! Hope you catch Untitled in Houston or Miami! I know I'm excited to walk through the Houston fair.

Best,

Aasiyah

Taste the Sweetest: Urdu

It tastes like the sweetest candy in the mouth, Urdu, the national language of Pakistan. A language that is not the mother tongue of the majority of Pakistan but one to serve as a unifying symbol for the diverse landscape.

zubān-e-Urdū-e-muʿallā "the language of the exalted camp"

Urdu comes from the Turkish word ordu, which means "camp" or "military." Until the mid-1800s, Farsi was the official language of the Mughal court, while Urdu was evolving through interactions between local Indo-Aryan dialects—primarily Khari Boli—and the languages of Muslim invaders: Farsi, Arabic, and Turkic. As Urdu began to take shape, aristocrats and poets started to patronize this emerging language. When the British established control in India, they replaced Farsi with Urdu as the administrative language in northern regions. Over time, Urdu became associated with Muslims and was written in the Perso-Arabic script, while Hindi was promoted by Hindu reformists in the Devanagari script.

Urdu was my first language. I don't remember knowing the difference between Urdu and English until I was in kindergarden (I did two years of pre-k). My kindergarten teacher asked me to stay back one day as she pointed to a picture and asked me what the image was. I said diggi as I had written down the same word underneath the picture. She asked me again what it was. My frustrated 6 year old self responds, diggi! She then realized I spoke another language at home and I wasn't just dense.

This story has really stuck with me, as I’ve come to realize how much of my English might not be American-English, having grown up in an Urdu-speaking household and community.

As I've learned to replace my foreign words with American-English, I have felt a sense of loss. A loss for a language that I tasted daily on my tongue to a language that tastes so tannic.

My community of Urdu speakers has dwindled with time and to help fill this void I have tried to immerse myself with Urdu studies.

Over the years, here have been some of my resources:

1. Urdupod101.com this is a great website that you can sign up for a daily email of an Urdu word. There's accompanying audio with the word written both in Arabic and Roman script. Best part it includes the word used in various sentences. To help learn the lesson better and practice my handwriting - I keep a journal where I write it all down.

2. Duolingo - so bear with me on this one. There's no Urdu on Duo BUT there's Arabic and Hindi. So you're in a way learning Urdu. It's tough but it has helped me improve.

3. rekhtalearning.com I haven't used this one but contemplating dropping the $100 for access to all their courses for a year.

4. Consume as much Urdu as possible - here's a youtube blog following the travels of Abrar: Wild Lens. There are also Urdu dramas on Youtube like Pyare Afzal and Ehd-e-Wafa.

5. iTalki!! This one is great because I love my teacher. Arooj Ahmed. She's based in Islamabad and has a degree in Psychology. Since I am fluent - we were studying poetry together and having conversations for me to improve and maintain my Urdu speaking skills. However, she can start from the complete basics.

6. One of my favorite podcasts is, Urduana. It's a weekly podcast that is pure poetry, literally and figuratively. Highly recommend if you want to explore the nuances of the Urdu language and poetry.

7. Speak to yourself. Sounds out there but it's the best way to check in with your vocabulary!

   
   

   **A note to mention: I grew up speaking Urdu with elders and also a family that spoke very formal Urdu.

So take the time to not just learn this language but taste the sweetness. Urdu is one of the most elegantly beautiful and complex languages in the world with its vast vocabulary and poetic nature.

Love,

Aasiyah

Book Club: Martyr!

Dear Book Club,

I’ve been working tirelessly to finish paintings for an upcoming group show at The Cathedral in Austin, TX on May 30th. Some days, I find solace in the silence—just the sound of the paintbrush against the canvas and my thoughts. Other times, I get completely lost in podcasts and audiobooks.

One audiobook I devoured recently was Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar. And before you rush to order a physical copy—I highly recommend listening to the audiobook. The accents bring the characters to life in a way that made me fall just a little bit in love with each of them.

Akbar’s prose feels like poetry for the ears—like silk against the skin. But it also pulls you into moments so raw and personal that it feels like you’re falling down a dark well of despair, because it hits too close to home. There’s a haunting beauty to the way the main character, Cyrus Shams, experiences depression.

Cyrus Shams is a queer Iranian-American poet grappling with life in the Midwest after the death of his mother in the 1988 Iran Air Flight 655 tragedy. Akbar gives voice to Cyrus’s grief, addiction, insomnia, and alienation—amplified by his complex cultural identity and encounters with racism. It's vital to see these themes explored, especially for the current generation of third-culture kids who often lack a safe space to examine these issues.

“At the intersection of Iranian-ness and Midwestern-ness was pathological politeness, an immobilizing compulsivity to avoid causing distress in anyone else. Cyrus thought about this a lot. You cooed at their ugly babies, nodded along with their racist bullshit… Midwestern politeness felt that way too, Cyrus learned, like it was burning cigarette holes in your soul.”— Cyrus, Martyr!

As Cyrus embarks on a journey toward sobriety, he becomes obsessed with the idea of martyrdom, researching the lives and deaths of martyrs throughout history. This quest takes him to New York City, where he meets Orkideh, a terminally ill Iranian artist staging her final performance at the Brooklyn Museum. Through his connection with her, Cyrus confronts his grief and unravels long-buried family truths, including revelations about his mother and his own identity.

“It’s easy for people who have sacrificed nothing to rationalize their own ordinariness by calling me lucky. But I sacrificed my entire life; I sold it to the abyss. And the abyss gave me art.”— Orkideh, Martyr!

So many lines from this novel hit me in places I didn’t even know existed. Orkideh says, “Painting saved me, but I can’t say I loved painting. I painted because I needed to. What I really loved, what I love, is having-painted. That was the high. Making something that would never have existed in the entirety of humanity had I not been there at that specific moment to make it.” That line has been echoing in my head as I’ve gone deeper into my own painting practice for this gallery show. The beginning of each piece feels like an uphill battle—frustrating and painful. But then, something shifts. Suddenly, you're weightless. Time dissolves. You fall in love with what you've just created. You feel vulnerable. And when you finally look up, it’s 5 a.m.

The novel completely drew me in with its layered structure—shifting perspectives, surreal dream sequences, and of course, Akbar’s poetic prose. I can’t wait to see what he writes next, but Martyr! has left me deeply moved and hungry for more.

With love,Aasiyah

P.S. If you’ve already read this one, reply and let me know your thoughts—I’d love to talk about it. And if not, consider this your sign to pick it up.