About Hajra

Hajra Malik is a visual artist who lives and works in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia. She is a contemporary miniature artist whose practice bridges centuries-old techniques with speculative, dreamlike worlds. Her work draws deeply from traditional South Asian and Persian miniature painting, reimagining its visual language to explore themes of memory, myth, and emotional terrain.

She holds a BFA in Miniature Painting from the National College of Arts (NCA)—founded in 1875 during British colonial rule, and one of the most influential art institutions in the subcontinent. She also earned a graduate degree in Global Affairs and Management (EMAGAM) from Arizona State University’s Thunderbird School of Global Management, where she expanded her understanding of cultural storytelling and art’s role in global spaces.

Hajra has a diverse studio practice that encompasses miniature painting, digital printing, installation, moving image, and game design. She is currently developing her work further by transferring her paracosm—a deeply personal alternate reality—into virtual formats alongside her painted works. This digital extension allows her mythic world to be explored interactively, merging the tactile with the intangible.

Her process remains rooted in traditional techniques: painting on handmade wasli paper, using fine brushes (often a single squirrel hair), and building colors through the layered techniques of gadrang and neemrang. Her compositions often feature recurring motifs—such as the seemurgh (phoenix), azhdaha (dragon), koi and beta fish, and side-profile portraits—each acting as a symbol of transformation, longing, or layered identity.

These elements repeat across works, forming patterns reminiscent of illuminated manuscripts. Through this repetition, she constructs emotional geometries that distort and reimagine spatial logic. Her compositions break and make dimensions, inviting viewers into environments that feel both intimate and unfamiliar—where the known flickers against the mythical.