In a society absolutely dominated by Western culture and whitewashed media, I started The Zain Archive as an attempt to play a small part in bringing our people back to their own culture and heritage. After all, Pakistan has absolutely no shortage of internationally recognized, legendary artists — and overlooking them would be a crime in itself.

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Art has been my world for as long as I can remember. From making (what I thought were) masterpieces in the back of my social studies notebook in second grade, to randomly channeling my inner Pennywise with face paint at midnight and scaring the living daylights out of some unfortunate houseguests, I believe I’ve explored quite a few different meanings of the word “art.” Digital art was a new quest that I braved on Abu’s old laptop in high school, and I haven’t stopped since then.

Mama always made a point to blast her CDs at deafening volumes on the way back from school. While the rest of my friends at the time were memorizing Drake lyrics, those car rides made it so that it didn’t take very long for me to start absolutely breaking it down to Munni Begum at the ripe old age of nine. It was only natural that my two worlds would end up colliding one day, and I’m glad I’ve been fortunate enough to be born in a time where I can share it with a larger audience.