Mussarat Arif was born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1972. She graduated from Karachi School of Arts in 1996. She started exhibiting work the same year in Sadequain art gallery. Her work focuses on traditional South Asian identity through Islamic geometric symbols. Her work also encapsulates traditional clothing of Pakistan like ‘Ajrak’. She has exhibited her work in Pakistan, USA, Italy, Saudia Arabia, Hong Kong, Dubai, Qatar, Singapore, UK and Malaysia. She is one of the pioneers of the revival of calligraphic South Asian art in Pakistan with more than 40 shows under her name. Her work is also included in the public collection of Larson Art Gallery in Washington, D.C. and Pakistan National Council of Arts in Islamabad, Pakistan.
Mussarat uses various mediums to express her spiritual pursuits. Her body of work is reflective of her Pakistani-Muslim diasporic identity. Her works are strongly influenced by history - both from her personal memories and her culture. Even her choice of mediums such as leather, copper, brass, wood, rilli, and thread has symbolic significance. The idea of connections, ones that stem from the yearning for her cultural and spiritual roots is woven into her body of work.
Mussarat’s work invokes a sense of yearning for answers through her mark-making. Every stitch or line she creates is one that is born from her values, a reflection of herself embedded in time - both past and present while inviting her viewers to step into their own spiritual search. The poetics of the process of creation is of significance to Mussarat. Working with tactile mediums such as sculpture, using metals, fabric, or thread, act as a means of physically manifesting the imprints of the artist’s feelings. With each piece, her yearning for home and the introspective quest for answers is molded into her art, inviting the viewer to lose themselves in these connections with time, memory, and what spirituality means to them. It is important for Mussarat to shed light on these questions but not dictate the individual’s experience of them. She ultimately leaves the interpretation of the answers to the viewer.