Nazar - The First Glance from the collection of RadiantArts

Nazar - The First Glance, 2025

Watercolors and Gouache on Arches paper

28 x 12 in

Inv: IQ1.1

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‘Longing and Belonging’

In an increasingly digital world, virtual interactions offer efficiency but often erode the tactile and emotional resonance of face-to-face human connection.

Drawing upon personal memory, this series revisits the artist’s childhood experiences of hospitality, moments in which gestures of welcome, care, and intimacy sowed and
nurtured the seeds of love.

Inspired by an ancient Fatimid text that traces love’s progression from seed to tree, the series of six artworks map parallel stages of hospitality, depicting how acts of welcome evolve into deeper states of longing and belonging.

1. Nazar — The First Glance

“And know, my brother, that the beginning and origin of love is nazar, a glance, a look toward a certain person. It is like a seed planted…”

The series opens with Nazar : the first gaze. Here, the host greets the guest with a wordless acknowledgment, a silent welcome. A smile, a gesture, while offering Sakar (sweets) in a bowl - a metaphorical vessel in which the seed of love is sown.

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About the artist

Dr Zaenab Imaduddin

Mumbai, India

Zaenab Imaduddin, Founder and Director of RadiantArts, is an artist whose practice is deeply rooted in ancient aesthetics and philosophical traditions. Her work seeks to extend these visual languages with a contemporary sensibility through a synthesis of multidimensional materiality spanning watercolour, metal, and blown glass. Through this fusion, she examines the liminal space between abstraction and representation, where inherited patterns become a living visual language.

Trained in Cairo under Prof. Georges Fikry at the Kulliyya al-Funun (Faculty of Arts, Helwan University), she contributed artworks on Fatimid monuments for three academic publications: Al-Aqmar: A Living Testimony to the Fatemiyeen, Al-Juyushi: A Vision of the Fatemiyeen, and Al-Jamiʿ al-Anwar: The Luminous Masjid.

She also holds a doctorate from the University of Bristol, where her research on Haraazi women in Yemen informed her broader commitment to cross-cultural understanding and dialogue.

Believing that art is a powerful conduit for cultural exchange, she founded RadiantArts, a platform dedicated to promoting Dawoodi Bohra artists and celebrating heritage, human values, and emotions through artistic and intellectual expression.

Her work has been showcased in exhibitions across Mumbai, Indore, Surat, Delhi, Dubai, Sharjah, Mombasa, Nairobi, Karachi, and Cairo, establishing her voice within the evolving landscape of contemporary Islamic art and cultural discourse.