Nargis Naqvi | Childhood Memories of Madinah

Nargis Naqvi is a Canadian-based painter whose work reflects heritage, womanhood, faith, and lived experience. Born in Ireland, raised in Saudi Arabia, educated in the United States, and now based in Canada, her cross-cultural life shapes the stories she tells through art. Drawing on Pakistani roots, Saudi upbringing, and Western education, she creates paintings centered on memory, identity, belonging, and the quiet strength of women.
Working in painting, mixed media, acrylic, oil, and spray paint, Nargis builds layered surfaces rich with texture, color, and symbolism. Her practice is intuitive and deeply personal, inspired by fabric, patterns, nature, and spiritual reflection. She is drawn to resilience, stillness, and the unspoken emotions carried within the body and heart.
Her current work explores home, displacement, and inner grounding, while celebrating bright florals and figurative imagery that bring warmth, curiosity, and connection

 

When I think of home, I think about sand, and I think about the two holy mosques. Growing up in Saudi Arabia, trips to Madinah were just part of life, not a special occasion, just something we did. This painting is built around those long road trips, the signs that are still there today even though so much else has changed, driving up to the mosque past old wooden doors and clay pots and sellers on the street, none of which exists anymore in that same way.
Walking up to the mosque, the green dome over the Prophet's (pbuh) grave was always the moment that got you. Once you've seen it, you don't forget it, and that's why it's the most bold aspect of this piece. As a child I could feel something settle in me around that mosque, my parents would sit in a corner and read the Quran inside in the cool air conditioned mosque, while I played outside in the courtyard with my siblings and the pigeons, who were always there in numbers. The painting creates memories from a child’s perspective as we felt free to run around a place that adults treated with so much reverence.
The little abstract figures depict the many nationalities one always sees there, people in their own ethnic clothes and colors, all in the same place. The seal of the Prophet, as was on his (pbuh) ring is painted amongst the simple Arab homes. I used collage, alcohol inks, bold acrylic strokes, and spray paint, and mostly let the memories surface as I worked rather than planning the whole thing out in advance. The surah written in the ‘Quran’ the man reads is Surah Taha (#20).