Q+Art is a series featuring the artists behind our First Friday Exhibitions. Today, we're talking with Dallas-based artist Maria Rasheed, whose work is featured in our January 2026 exhibition, Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State.
Maria Rasheed’s studio in Dallas holds fragments of a life lived across continents: hand-woven carpets that once anchored rooms in Lahore, now repurposed as subjects for her documentation of memory and migration. The Pakistani artist, trained as a visual communication designer, has built a practice that transforms family heirlooms into meditations on loss, preservation, and the complicated work of belonging.
For over three generations, carpets collected by her grandfather provided “a backdrop for a collection of photographs and memories” in her family home. Now, having migrated to the United States, Rasheed paints intricate fragments of these textiles, sometimes exposing them as cyanotypes before washing them—a process that strips away details, mirroring both her grandfather’s deteriorating memory in his later years and the inevitable decay of material objects. She cuts the prints into strips and weaves them into “paper carpets,” using traditional warp-and-weft techniques to create what she calls “an archive of memory and migration.”
Her inclusion in Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State speaks to the Texas identity she finds most compelling: not the stereotypical cowboys and rugged individualism, but “a vibrant, shifting archive of diaspora.” In Texas, she’s discovered that art examining cultural erasure isn’t peripheral but “a vital, active part of the state’s evolution.” Here, amid the vastness that “demands a shift in scale” from the intimate Indo-Persian miniature tradition she knew in Pakistan, Rasheed weaves her own story into the complex fabric of a new home.
How has Texas shaped your work, and what aspects of the state's identity do you find most compelling beyond the usual stereotypes?
Maria Rasheed: As a Pakistani artist living and working in Texas, the state has shaped my work through its vastness and its complex history of migration. The "Texas identity" I find most compelling is one of intersectionality. While many see Texas through the lens of rugged landscapes and cowboys, I find a more compelling resonance in the state’s status as a vibrant, shifting archive of diaspora.
What impact has your upbringing and cultural background had on your work, and how has it influenced your approach and aesthetic?
MR: My work serves as an archive of memory and migration, explored through the lens of domestic objects, specifically carpets collected by my family and rooted in my South Asian heritage. I meticulously paint intricate fragments of these carpets, using techniques that mimic the traditional warp-and-weft of hand-knotted textiles. These pieces reflect the inherent fragility of both material objects and human memory over time. By documenting these fading patterns, my practice seeks to resist historical erasure while acknowledging the inevitable decay of our physical and mental archives.
What advice do you wish you could give your younger artistic self?
MR: I would tell my younger artistic self to be kinder to myself, to invest more time creating and experimenting.
What are the advantages and challenges of building an art practice in Texas compared to coastal art hubs, and how does regional identity influence how your work is received?
MR: As an immigrant, I can only draw a comparison between Texas and South Asian/Pakistani art practices. In Pakistan, art is often intimate and detailed, rooted in the Indo-Persian miniature tradition, whereas Texas offers a landscape so vast it demands a shift in scale.
Working in Texas, I feel that art that reclaims family histories or examines cultural erasure is seen as a vital, active part of the state's evolution, blending modernist influences with traditional heritage.
View Lone Star: New Takes on the 28th State
Our January 2026 First Friday Exhibition features an inspiring array of work created in or about Texas, and includes work by Maria Rasheed.
Exhibition | Curator’s Statement | First Friday Exhibitions
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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. All photos published with permission of Maria Rasheed; featured artwork: “Carpet Fragments” (detail).