Zahid Mayo

Born in 1987 in Alipur Chatha (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Zahid Mayo was born in Alipur Chatha, a small town in Punjab, and moved with his family to the farming village of Madrassa Chatha when he was four years old. He started school there and learned calligraphy from the Takhti system that used to prevail in rural Punjab. Later on, his interest developed in drawing and poetry. The walls of the village were his early surfaces; pieces of chalk from school and left over bits of coal were his first materials. He moved to Lahore in 2005 to study art and, after graduating from the National College of Arts, began his career as an artist. His works can be seen in galleries and also in random places like trees, parks, roadsides, sometimes even on human bodies. 

Zahid Mayo states of his practice: “I am a storyteller and I believe that stories need not always be structured from words. I want to narrate stories through a visual form…I am a witness to those countless eyes who embarrass my own vision and to those faces that become an imprint on my subconscious. I am not able to face them directly so, with the help of my photography and sketch book, I let go of my subconscious. I cover my subject in the garb of traditional visual depiction to express my narrative onto the canvas.”