In the natural world, few things exist in isolation. Beneath the surface, an intricate network of relationships sustains life, each organism playing its part in something much larger than itself. Consider the humble honeybee. Within the hive, thousands work in quiet unison, guided by a collective instinct to nurture, protect and sustain. It’s a delicate balance of labour and care, and one that Pakistani-born Australian artist Mehwish Iqbal sees reflected in the human experience.
For Iqbal, the hive is more than a marvel of nature. It is a metaphor for womanhood, community and the invisible labour that holds us together. An idea that takes shape in her latest exhibition, Bait-al-Nahl – The House of Bees, now showing at Bundanon on the NSW South Coast.
Through a richly layered collection of silk embroideries, paintings and sculptural installations, Iqbal traces the threads connecting migration, memory and belonging. Her works move between landscapes and generations, drawing on centuries-old artisanal traditions and collaborations with communities across Pakistan, India and Thailand. Among them, a monumental 12-metre silk work, created alongside her daughter, becomes an intimate expression of the knowledge and creativity passed between women. Yet beneath the beauty of these intricate works lie more difficult histories. Of displacement, conflict, cultural erasure and the enduring human instinct to rebuild.
In a world increasingly defined by division, Iqbal’s work offers another way of seeing things. One in which nature becomes a source of wisdom, and healing begins with the recognition that our lives, like those within a hive, are inextricably connected.
Mehwish Iqbal, Bait-al-Nahl – The House of Bees (installation view), 2026, Bundanon. Photo: Zan Wimberley
To start, can you tell us a little about Bait-al-Nahl – The House of Bees and what audiences will encounter when they visit Bundanon?
Bait-al-Nahl means “the house of bees,” and I think of the exhibition as a cultivation of ideas, a place where our interdependent relationship with nature is tended and examined. Visitors will encounter embroidery, siah qalam painting and porcelain, each carrying a different story. Chinar speaks of the freedom of the Kashmiri people and the erasure of a landscape through oppression and conflict. A Poppy Crop documents the Afghan struggle: how external interference led indigenous farmers to cultivate a crop that fed addiction and war, nature subverted to serve harm. Last Prayer turns to nature through sacred, communal practice, with women gathering to commemorate loved ones they have lost.
The embroideries and paintings carry narratives of indigenous landscapes and the haphazard exodus of masses into unfamiliar territories. Baitul al Nahl, is a nucleus that embodies these conversations through personal and lived experiences of various communities via a didactic and visceral/visual language, a channel that offers self reflection, healing and coming together in an immersive and participatory environment through nature being the maternal presence sprouting new seeds of hope through fresh perspectives.
Why did you choose the bee and the hive as the central motif for this body of work?
As an artist, I have always been drawn to finding meaningful parallels between human communities and the natural world, particularly the worlds of flora and fauna. The bee became an important motif for me because of the way a hive functions as a collective, matriarchal society, sustained through shared labour, interdependence and a remarkable sense of purpose. There is a selflessness in the way bees work for the survival and flourishing of the whole, and I see echoes of this in the female experience: in the labour of nurturing, building, sustaining and giving back to our communities, often in ways that remain unseen.
Bees also play a vital role in pollination, fertilising flowers and enabling new growth. I find this a powerful parallel with the ways women nurture possibilities, sustain relationships and create the conditions for others to flourish. Through conversations with women and people close to me, I have become increasingly interested in how healing and growth emerge through connection, through the quiet work of holding one another, and through the collective effort of rebuilding. For me, the hive becomes more than a place of shelter. It is a system of care, labour and reciprocity, where each contribution helps sustain something larger than the individual. Bait-al-Nahl explores these relationships between nature and human experience, and the ways that, even amid displacement, fracture and loss, communities find a modus operandi to endure, repair and begin again.
You work across textiles, painting, ceramics and installation. How do you decide which medium is right for a particular idea or story?
The idea chooses the material. Silk carries the memory of the human hand in its structure, and it has anchored languages, cultures and rituals along the routes of its trade, so it suits stories of circulation and the body. Siah qalam, with its dot-by-dot patience, suits landscapes of conflict and survival. Porcelain is fragile and white like bone, and when I make thousands of hand-sculpted seeds, the number and the repetition become part of the meaning, a sacred practice that carries through perpetual repetition, synonymous with the changing of days and nights, seasons, circulation within the body and cosmic systems, a constant movement that replenishes itself through repetition in a perfectly balanced order.
Media, for me, is a mere tool or vocabulary that conveys the sentiment in the best form, and something that also nurtures my impetus to experiment, play and delve into the unknown. There’s a strong sense of movement throughout the exhibition.
Mehwish Iqbal, A Poppy Crop (detail), 2026, hand-sculpted porcelain ceramic with glaze finish, Bundanon. Photo: Zan Wimberley
Does your own experience of migration shape the work at all?
Certainly, my personal experiences of residing across different landscapes and interacting with diverse communities have been decoded within my art practice. I think, if anything, these interactions have made me more informed about the ground realities, deepened my appreciation, and forged new perspectives around the movement of people through language, textiles, architecture, and cultural and communal practices, through close, interactive and immersive experiences.
You’ve collaborated with artisan communities in Pakistan, India and Thailand. What have those collaborations taught you about craft and the ways traditions are passed down?
Working with marginalised Muslim artisans in Thailand and India has taught me that a tradition lives in the hands that carry it. In silk, the lineage of ritual, memory and storytelling is passed from person to person, and honouring that lineage is part of the work. Silk is a material that transcends landscapes, and, as you can see, its manufacturing processes are inherited and expressed differently across borders.
I have heard the stories of these communities and worked to imbue their narratives into my work, honouring traditional crafts that are fading as these hand practices face the advent of technology and the marginalisation of their creators. Creating these works in Pakistan has also been very special for me, allowing me to document crafts that have been practised for centuries and use them within contemporary narratives, while preserving a record of these traditional practices.
Your daughter also worked with you on the monumental 12-metre silk piece. What was it like to bring that family relationship into the making of the work?
My grandmother involved me in creative activities from an early age, and working with Minnah felt like a natural progression of that experience. She shares my visual sensibility and is meticulous and sensitive in her approach to the medium. Making this work together was a celebratory experience, allowing us to bring our perspectives together and engage in a shared creative dialogue. What made it particularly meaningful was the opportunity to pass on something I had received from my grandmother and mother. It felt like a continuation of a generational exchange between women, where knowledge is carried through practice and experience, and evolves as it moves from one
generation to the next.
Mehwish Iqbal, Bait-al-Nahl – The House of Bees (installation view), 2026, Bundanon. Photo: Zan Wimberley
You’ve described the work as being about harmony – how it is made, fractured and reimagined. Where do you see that process of repair or healing within the exhibition?
Healing appears in different forms throughout the exhibition. In Last Prayer, it is communal: women gathering to send prayers towards the departed, so that grief is carried together. In Chinar and A Poppy Crop, the fracture is plain, in displacement and in a crop turned towards destruction. The works don’t pretend otherwise, but they make space to remember. In the paintings, gold breaks through the dark ground as a sign of endurance and renewal, and in the siah qalam landscapes, life keeps growing in fragmented places.
I am interested in how healing happens not only through individual reflection, but through our relationships with one another and with the natural world. Like a hive, a community is built through repeated acts of care, through labour that is often invisible, and through the willingness to contribute to something beyond oneself.
Nature, in this exhibition, is a maternal presence that holds all of it. It reminds us that even in landscapes marked by violence, displacement and loss, there remains the possibility of regeneration. The exhibition asks us to think about interconnectedness, but the world can often feel increasingly divided. What do you hope people might take away from spending time with these works?
I feel we live in times of extreme uncertainty, chaos and anxiety. As an artist my impetus to create these works have been to draw attention to an innate bond we share among our selves and with our natural surroundings. Art is an interesting media that channels emotions , conversations and energy on its own terms, I feel visiting Bundanon Museum opens up this appreciation of the beautiful and natural treasures of Australia landscape and this exhibition nestled in its heart expands on their experiences further carving a lasting imprint.
Finally, is there one work or detail in the exhibition that feels especially personal to you? Why?
I feel the most rewarding and enjoyable experience for me as an artist has always been not knowing and the possibilities of trial and error. This approach always leads me to step out of my comfort zone and take risks. Imbued in this philosophy I think Naqsh e Jahan is one particular work that really pushes me to explore several new territories, in terms of the scale, creative process, layering, the work shifts with an incredible fluidity in its creative freedom. Its sculptural and painterly nature is heavily imbued with a strong element of story telling with the memory of my grandmother’s sugarcane fields, with creatures running around after burning the field in quest of survival and the fertile ground being prepare for cultivation of a new crop. I took special joy in creating sculptural and painterly embroidery techniques to animate those characters and view textiles from a fresh perspective.
Mehwish Iqbal’s exhibition Bait-al-Nahl – The House of Bees opens 31 October 2026 at Bundanon, and will run until 14 February 2027.
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Feature image (left): Mehwish Iqbal, Bait-al-Nahl – The House of Bees (installation view), 2026, Bundanon. Photo: Zan WimberleyFeature image (right): Mehwish Iqbal,Naqsh-e-Jahan(detail), 2026, hand embroidery on hand-woven silk, 24-carat gold leaf and silkscreen. Photo: Zan Wimberley
