“Anywhere you live in the world, you will feel the need to build your own safe space, your own world, and words give rise to those worlds.” For Lahore-based artist Ali Kazim, this conviction anchors Urdu Worlds — the UAE’s first contemporary art exhibition dedicated to the Urdu language, now showing at Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai.

Curated by Hammad Nasar, the show stages a conversation between two decades of Kazim’s paintings, drawings, sculptures, and prints, and the late Zarina’s delicate woodcuts — two artists born on opposite sides of a divided subcontinent, worlds apart in geography yet bound by a shared devotion to Urdu literature. From clay hearts modelled after Bano Qudsia’s Raja Gidh to installations built from human hair, Kazim’s work draws on memory, faith, and the weight language carries across generations. Together, the artists trace a continuum from the Indus Valley Civilization to the present, exploring how words become anchor points for identity in an age of migration and displacement.

Urdu Worlds runs at Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai, until May 31, 2026.

📖 Read the full feature in ADA-Iconica, Issue 78.