We Sinful Women

Details

We Sinful Women, an exhibition featuring rarely seen works from the private collection of Taimur Hassan, will open at the SOAS Library on 18 September 2025. We Sinful Women: The Library Project, curated by Salima Hashmi and Manmeet K Walia, brings together leading women artists from South Asia and the Middle East, positioning their work within a framework of resistance, resilience and shared histories. Running until 7th December 2025, the exhibition will be accompanied by a panel discussion on Thursday, 16th October, and regular tours led by the curators.

This is the second edition of The Library Project, which began at the Chelsea College of Arts Library. For this iteration, SOAS Library opens its space beyond its members, inviting the wider public to engage with the exhibition in an environment where silence, scholarship and dissent intersect. Open daily from 8:00 am to 7:00 pm, the exhibition provides the library with an active site of dialogue, reflection and learning.

After a successful run of (Un)Layering the Future Past of South Asia at the SOAS Gallery, from April to June this year, the curator duo brings We Sinful Women that foregrounds the practices of women artists whose work spans decades and disciplines, creating a constellation of voices. Modernists, post-modernists and contemporary artists are shown together- providing students, researchers and visitors with a rare opportunity to contextualise their practices side by side.

A multidisciplinary exhibition- offers a wide range of conversation including paintings, sculptures, and prints. The highlights of this exhibition are Contemporary artists such as Shilpa Gupta, Bani Abidi, Gauri Gill, Huma Bhabha, and Shahzia Sikander, positioned with the modern and postmodern voices which include Arpita Singh, Nalini Malani, and Zarina. The exhibition also includes Photographic works by Shadi Ghadirian, Naiza Khan, and Marilyn Silverstone.

The exhibition situates these practices within the geopolitical realities of today, exploring how women artists have continually redefined the personal as political. Their work speaks to solidarities that transcend borders, offering insight into how creative expression becomes both witness and weapon in times of silence and unrest.

We Sinful Women: Women in Art and Activism, a panel on the 16th of October will bring together artists, curators and writers like Natasha Ginwala, and Bani Abidi. to extend the exhibition’s themes into an open conversation, while guided tours will provide visitors with deeper engagement.

Panel Title: Women, Art, Activism and Poetry
Venue: SOAS University- The Djam Lecture Theatre, SOAS University, SOAS University of London
10 Thornhaugh Street London WC1H 0XG
Time: 6pm- 7:30 pm
Panelists:
Bani Abidi (Artist)
Catherine Wood (Director of Curatorial Dept a & Chief Curator, Tate Modern)
Naiza Khan (Artist)
Natasha Ginwala (Artistic Director, Colomboscope, and Curator)
Rukhsana Ahmed (Author, We Sinful Women)
Salima Hashmi (Co- Curator, We Sinful Women)
Samta Nadeem (Curatorial Director, STIR)
Chaired by:
Manmeet K. Walia (Co- Curator, We Sinful Women)

Complete Artist List
Arpita Singh | Ashfika Rehman | Bani Abidi | Dayanita Singh | Devyani Krishna| Effat Naghi | Farida Batool | Gauri Gill | Huma Bhabha | Humaira Abid | Marilyn Silverstone | Mounira Al Solh | Naiza Khan | Nalini Malani | Noorain Inam | Reena Kallat | Salima Hashmi | Shadi Ghadirian | Shahzia Sikander | Shilpa Gupta | Shirin Neshat | Sonia Balassanian | Zarina

Click here to register for the roundtable discussion.