Papia Sarwar
Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh
Pronouns: She/her
Artforms
Painting / Drawing / Digital art / Installation art / Textile art
Topic Areas
Feminism / Gender / Construction / Shelter
Change-Making Skills
Public speaking / Storytelling / Active listening / Community organising / Graphic design / Relationship building / Architecture and Natural Building
About
I am an artist and architect who believes, ‘Form follows Faith’ I build—listening to soil, memory, and the language of inherited hands. My practice moves between making and unmaking, where walls rise from earth, and pigments are drawn from spices,leaves, clay, ash, and time. I work with natural pigments and low-cost,natural, locally available materials like mud, bamboo,straw,jute, and discarded fragments -transforming them into spaces that breathe. I believe architecture is not just about structure, but about care; not permanence, but continuity. My work is rooted in cultural memory and intergenerational knowledge. I gather stories from women, from rural landscapes, from rituals that quietly live in everyday life, and I weave them into my art and spaces. Each creation becomes a vessel - holding emotion, resilience, and tenderness.
Project Goals for the next 6-12 Months
I want to move towards creating soulful community gatherings and spaces through natural building, co-creation, and collective healing. My practice explores adobe and cob construction with local communities, where building becomes a shared act of care, learning, and belonging. I am also developing natural pigment making and watercolor healing therapy as ways to reconnect people with earth, memory, and creativity. I dream of building community mosques and spaces that feel grounded, humane, and spiritually alive-spaces shaped by local hands, natural materials, and cultural heritage. Guided by my love for Allah and my mother, my process is both spiritual and deeply rooted in the earth. I see creation as an act of devotion, where nature, heritage, and human touch meet in harmony. Through my work, I hope to help people reconnect with the earth, with one another, and with something greater than ourselves.
