Blanket Fort Dreams
Vibrant screenprints illuminate the domestic

Shazia Ahmad, “Invitation,” 2022-2024, screen-print on cotton fabric, clothespins, ply-cotton clothesline, bedsheets, screen printed pillows and assorted pillows and cushions, 22' x 7' (installation photo courtesy of SNAP Gallery)
All art openings should include a blanket fort for visitors to shelter from the pressures of mingling.
At Shazia Ahmad’s exhibition, Invitation — on until Feb. 22 at SNAP Gallery in Edmonton — you can kick off your snow boots and settle in under a luminous canopy of screen printed fabric, patterned with fish, hydrangeas and lupine flowers.
Shazia Ahmad is a Quebec-based artist who recently spent two years screen printing on paper and fabric at a residency at St. Michael’s Printshop in St. John’s, Newfoundland. She was inspired by the lupine flowers all around her on the coast, and the rolling capelin, a yearly phenomenon when the waves of the Atlantic are filled with schools of tiny capelin fish rolling along in the surf. These motifs became ones that she repeats over and over in her screen prints, from cushions to handkerchiefs to works on paper.
“My work is really about belonging,” says Ahmad.
She was born in Karachi, Pakistan to a Pakistani father and Chilean mother, but has lived most of her life in Canada. That mixed background informs her work, especially her interest in repeating patterns. “I’m always trying to find where I belong, where my home is,” says Ahmad.

Shazia Ahmad, “Repose (Night Aquarium),” 2023, 12-panel, three-colour screen print on Coventry rag with colouring pencil; monoprint, 36" x 48" (installation photo courtesy of SNAP Gallery)
Ahmad works with a limited palette of cobalt blue, magenta, dioxazine violet and ecru. These bold colours vibrate against each other to form dynamic contrasts, and create a unity across her work. The vivid patterns of fish and flowers repeat to form geometric combinations, with the same patterns rendered in different colours across her works on fabric.
Repose (Night Aquariam), a screen print on paper with coloured pencil details, is done in just two colours. The vivid cobalt blue conjures up a nighttime atmosphere and contrasts with pops of magenta that draw the eye deeper into the scene. The piece was inspired by an aquarium at a friend’s house that Ahmad was drawn to while house sitting.
“The way I look at a domestic object today is not the way it’s going to look in an hour from now,” says Ahmad. “I’m never going to get this moment back again.”

Shazia Ahmad, detail, “Repose (Night Aquarium),” 2023,
12-panel, three-colour screen print on Coventry rag with colouring pencil; monoprint, 36" x 48" (installation photo courtesy of SNAP Gallery)
The domestic objects in the show, including pillows and handkerchiefs, are tactile and invite touch. There is also a small zine that visitors are encouraged to take from the show, called Comforts for a Hard Time. The little zine is a bright token with sweet advice for hard days.
The centerpiece of the exhibition is a large blanket fort entitled Dreaming, tucked into a corner of the space. Lit from within, the screen printed fabric is a welcoming canopy filled with plump pillows that visitors can touch and lay on. Ahmad is interested in nostalgia and play, and the way that domestic objects can hold meaning and memories. She never built a blanket fort like this when she was a child, but she hopes that viewers will be able to connect the interactive work to their own inner child.
“This value that I’ve ascribed to these things…it’s rooted in remembering but also misremembering,” says Ahmad.
While you’re checking out Invitation, don’t forget to step into the next room and see Exuberant Multitudes: Queer Ecology Hanky Project, a travelling group show of colourful printed handkerchiefs that complements the vibrant patterns of Ahmad’s work, also on display until Feb. 22. ■
Shazia Ahmad, Invitation, is on view at SNAP Gallery in Edmonton from Jan. 18 to Feb. 22, 2025
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SNAP Gallery
10572 115 Street, Edmonton, Alberta T5H 3K6
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Tues, Wed noon - 6 pm; Thurs noon - 7 pm; Fri, Sat Noon - 5 pm; (Call ahead pending official opening in March.)