Sobia Ahmad

Sobia Ahmad is a Pakistan-born interdisciplinary artist whose practice explores spirituality, ecology, and everyday ritual through analog photography, moving image, and installation. She approaches the darkroom as a space for experimentation, where uncertainty, chance, and process become integral to image-making. Ahmad hand-processes film using homemade, biodegradable developers made from kitchen compost, coffee, washing soda, and plant-based materials. Her work explores how analog media can foreground slowness, tactility, and material transformation while opening space for relational and non-rational ways of understanding the world.

Ahmad received an MFA from Carnegie Mellon University in 2024 and has exhibited at institutions and festivals including the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, and the Beijing Experimental Short Film Festival. Her work has been supported by the Wherewithal Research Grant (DC) and the Exposure Artist Grant (PA). She is a recipient of Silver Eye Center for Photography’s Fellowship ’25 Keystone Award and is currently a Hamiltonian Artists Fellow in Washington, DC. Ahmad teaches darkroom-based photography at the Pittsburgh Center for Arts & Media, where she enjoys supporting students in refining their creative visions.