Before WAIR became a leather studio, Annem Zaidi was already working with form, fabric, shadow, and the quiet drama of the female figure.
She trained in painting at the National College of Arts, a foundation that shows up in her practice not as decoration but as discipline: the ability to hold a line, understand proportion, see posture before detail, and let a surface carry emotion without becoming loud.
The years that followed moved her across the Middle East — exhibitions, private commissions, studios in different cities — and now to the United States, where she paints from a Bethesda atelier. Across every move, the subject has stayed the same. She paints women.
A practice built on restraint
Her paintings have often been described through the language of restraint. In a profile in The Express Tribune, August 11, 2013, Annem spoke about the female persona as a bridge between the inner and outer world, and about creating characters without showing their faces. The work was not simply about absence. It was about how much can be understood through posture, drapery, and the body's smallest decisions.
That idea has followed her for years.
In Dawn, September 8, 2013, the critic Saira Dar wrote about her work at Taseer Art Gallery: black grounds, white and ochre drapery, solitary feminine figures, paintings where the clothing itself becomes the way a figure is read. The review noted a focus on attire and posture, on figures that hold mood without needing a fully revealed face. Her artist page at the Taseer Art Gallery preserves the same language: white fabric silhouettes against shadowy black backdrops, mystery, grace, and femininity.
Women, motherhood, and the figure
Across Annem's earlier paintings, the female figure appears again and again — sometimes faceless, sometimes partly concealed, often defined by draped fabric and body language rather than direct portraiture.
Dawn, May 4, 2018, covered her exhibition An Ode to Motherhood at Full Circle Gallery in Karachi. The piece described her subject as the transformation a woman moves through in pregnancy, rendered in oil on canvas with grace, poise, and insight. The figures were again faceless, but not empty. They carried feeling through form.
In 2024, Annem's work moved into a more public emotional register. Arab News, April 17, 2024, covered her Sanat Gallery exhibition From The River To The Sea — fourteen paintings of white silhouettes on black canvases, the keffiyeh used as a symbol of Palestinian women's strength, resilience, and courage. The exhibition was a tribute to Palestinian women.
That same visual language — the black ground, the white form, the drama of cloth, the refusal to over-explain the face — runs through much of her work.
Why leather
Leather is intimate in a different way from canvas.
A canvas is looked at. A bag is carried. It moves through the day with the person who owns it. It sits on a table, rests against clothing, travels, softens, and ages. That makes the painted mark more personal — not larger, but closer.
For Annem, painting on leather is not a departure from fine art. It is a shift in scale and relationship. The surface is smaller, the object is functional, and the artwork has to live in the world rather than remain on a wall.
A leather bag already has a body. It has edges, handles, weight, tension, grain, and a way it collapses or stands. Painting on it is not the same as placing a graphic on top. The artist has to understand where the hand will hold it, where the leather will bend, where the mark should live, and where it should stop.
That is why WAIR's painted work is intentionally limited. A commission is not meant to overpower the bag. It is meant to feel as though it belongs there.
Her own work, outside WAIR
WAIR is one expression of Annem's practice, not the whole of it.
Her painting portfolio, exhibitions, and studio work live separately at annemzaidi.com. That distinction matters. WAIR is where her artist's hand enters leather. Her own work remains its own body of painting — larger, slower, and independent from the object.
A piece of your own
Initials make a small, personal starting point. Annem paints each set by hand, without stencils, preprinted transfers, or digital printing. A curve changes with the brush; a familiar letter takes on the character of the hand that paints it.
For original artwork, the conversation can begin with a reference, a colour, or an idea you have kept. Annem works on the completed bag, with its shape and the person who will carry it in mind.
Explore how the bags are made or personalization to find a starting point.