Asma Waheed
Portals of Holding
Exhibition Dates: April 26 - July 5, 2026
Opening Reception: April 26, 1-4pm
The Ely Center is pleased to present Portals of Holding, a solo exhibition of works by Asma Waheed. Working primarily in clay, Waheed draws from architectural materials and domestic traditions from the Middle East and South Asia and reimagines them through a deeply personal exploration of visibility, privacy, and cultural inheritance.
As a Pakistani Muslim woman, mother and artist living in the United States, Waheed’s practice is shaped by an ongoing conversation between stories revealed and stories held close. Her work balances on this tension, creating forms that both invite and withhold, offering moments of access while keeping moments of protection and intimacy.
Waheed uses perforated screens, draped textiles, and architectural references that allude to systems of boundaries that are physical, cultural and also psychological. Light filters through punctured surfaces, playful glazes make your eyes dance along surfaces, and fabric that could be flowing on a person is still, tethered to the wall and protected by a pedestal. What emerges is a dynamic interplay between exposure and concealment, where meaning is never fully given but is hinted at in fragments.
Central to Waheed’s practice are her ceramic vessels. These works draw on the universal rituals in domestic life: the table, the cup and the act of gathering. These vessels become sites for connection. Her use of patterns and surface treatment give these objects their layered histories allowing them to function as personal objects and carriers of a broader cultural memory.
Waheed is currently earning her MFA at MICA, but has also studied with Iranian ceramic masters. Rather than seeking to preserve tradition in a static form, her work activates it and allows for her inherited visual languages to shift, expand and speak to her contemporary experience. Waheed’s practice embraces the oppositions of softness vs strength, visibility vs holding and tradition vs transformation.
Please join us on Sunday, April 26, 1-4pm for the opening reception for Portals of Holding at 162 James Street in New Haven, CT.
Asma Waheed is a multidisciplinary artist with Pakistani roots, based in Ellicott City, Maryland, where she balances her creative practice with her role as a mother of four. Her work explores themes of identity, heritage, and self-expression, shaped by the complexities of diaspora and the everyday realities of motherhood.
Asma holds a Bachelor's degree in Education from West Virginia University and later pursued her passion for ceramics by earning a Master’s degree from Hood College, Maryland. She is currently an MFA candidate in Studio Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her dedication to her Art practice has been recognized through numerous awards, including the prestigious Leslie King Hammond Graduate Fellowship from MICA, the Windgate University Fellowship from the Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts, and the NCECA Graduate Fellowship Award. She also serves as the Student Director-at-Large for the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts (NCECA), where she advocates for student and contributes to the broader ceramics community.