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A new photo-collage combining landscape imagery with notions of sacred geometry to reconfigure the urban cityscape
In this intricately assembled hand-cut collage, artist Henna Nadeem utilises triangles and circles to reconfigure a nighttime cityscape, populated with scenes from urban landscapes, including water reflections, city lights and night skies sourced from travel books and lifestyle catalogues.
Taking inspiration from the textiles of Pakistan and South Asia, this new work, titled Night Circles, recalls Circles, Nadeem’s seminal piece from 2004 and revisits her recurring themes of landscape, pattern and geometry. Influenced by the spiritual significance ascribed to shapes, patterns and proportions within the concept of sacred geometry, Nadeem utilises geometric principles to consider the intertwined nature of tourism and imperialism and how landscapes are disrupted and reshaped.
While the artist’s previous work has tended to focus on rural scenes, Night Circles provides the missing link between Nadeem’s early rural collages and her more recent work which see these rural landscapes becoming increasingly indistinct and obscure, obliterated by the city's relentless march.
Night Circles was commissioned by Autograph on the occasion of the exhibition I Still Dream of Lost Vocabularies and has been added to our collection.
Henna Nadeem (b. 1966, Leeds) is a visual artist known for her intricate photographic collages and large-scale public installations. Combining geometric and organic patterns with images of urban and rural landscapes, her work draws from diverse historical and cultural influences, including Islamic art and Japanese geometry. She repurposes imagery from tourist guides, magazines, and mass media to create layered compositions.
Nadeem earned her BFA from John Moores University (Liverpool) in 1989 and her MFA from the Royal College of Art (London) in 1993. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as Norwich Castle Museum & Gallery (UK), South London Gallery (UK), ICA (UK), Tate Britain (UK), and Koldo Mitxelena Kulturunea (Spain). In 2004, her work was installed at Piccadilly Circus Underground Station.
She has completed residencies at Camden Art Centre (UK) and Artspace (Australia) and was commissioned by Photoworks in 2006. Her work is held in major collections including Autograph (UK), the British Council (UK), the Government Art Collection (UK) and the V&A (UK). Nadeem lives and works in London.
10 Oct 2025 – 21 Mar 2026
A free exhibition examining political dissent and erasure through the idea of collage
Banner image: Henna Nadeem, Night Circles, 2025. Commissioned by and collection of Autograph, London. © and courtesy of the artist.
Exhibition image: Sabrina Tirvengadum and Mark Allred, Family [detail], 2023. © and courtesy the artists.
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