About

Hannah Muzaffar Shah is a Lahore-based artist, illustrator, designer and researcher whose practice moves between art, writing, research and activism. She holds a bachelor's degree in Textile Design from the Pakistan Institute of Fashion and Design and a master's degree in Creative Practices in Art and Design from Beaconhouse National University. She went on to spend six years in academia, at COMSATS University, Beaconhouse National University and her alma mater, PIFD.

Her work explores the interconnectedness of human and more-than-human life. At its heart is an immense love for animals and the natural world. Her guiding idea comes from Wayne Dyer: if you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. For Shah, the world reveals its beauty when we look at it with an open heart, and her work shares what she finds.

Central to her thinking is the belief that both insensitivity and empathy are learned. Desensitisation is taught to us, often so early and so quietly that we never question it. Compassion can be learned in the same way. If we can unlearn one and learn the other, we can change how we see, and with it our relationship to the life around us and to the world we share. Her work, as an artist and as an artivist, is an effort to make that shift possible.

She is the recipient of a national design award and has exhibited her work. In 2013 she founded Faltoo Sey Paltoo, Pakistan's only rescue centre for special-needs and senior animals, where she serves as Director and Creative Head. Through it she has directed and developed many projects that bring rescue, design and art together, often through co-creation with the community, asking people to move from sympathy to shared responsibility.

Curiosity drives everything she makes, and for her, curiosity leads straight to the joy of creation. Her approach is whimsical and quirky, spontaneous and playful, and her work is rich in colour. It celebrates being alive, and sharing this world with everything in it.