Ayesha Naeem, born in 2001, is a visual artist based in Wah Cantt. She graduated from Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi in 2025, majoring in Miniature Painting with Distinction. For her thesis, she innovatively merges contemporary miniature art with textile techniques. She creates intricate hand-embroidered art pieces and installations on fragile surfaces that explore the complexities of fear of intimacy, revealing the overwhelming emotions that come with vulnerability. Her artwork ‘Baggage of Misery’ was displayed at VM Art Gallery for the 21st Emerging Talent Exhibition.

My artwork explores how the all-consuming grasp of the fear of physical touch and intimacy can take over someone’s life. Traumatic and violent content has always been a part of my early exposure to the world and that is how my understanding became warped. That is why I have limited contact with men, which has led to limited exposure, and now I struggle to accept the idea of intimacy. As a result, I associate the fear to be overwhelming with how I feel regarding the world around me, and how everything feels violated. The creeping figs symbolize how my fears have enveloped my mind. Through early exposure to traumatic content they have taken root and spread all over my thoughts and consciousness. For the visual representation, I used fragile materials like tissue paper, fabric and buckram to represent the fragility of my mind, and the embroidery of figs signify how my fear permeates my existence and identity, dominating every thought, feeling and actions.