Zaam Arif works primarily between the hours of 8 PM and 4 AM, accompanied by the calm of the night and the evergreen ghazals of Mohammad Rafi and Jagjit Singh, compiled into a playlist by his father, with whom he shares his studio in Houston, Texas. With two artist parents, A.Q. Arif and Mussarat Arif, Zaam Arif’s career as a painter seems fated, despite the circuitous route through which he arrived at it — after being a student of physics, an aspiring writer, a filmmaker, a graphic designer and a photographer. His paintings carry the traces of these past lives, conveying stories in paint that feel as nuanced as novels and as epic as films — while transporting viewers to the heady realm of abstract and existential questions about the nature of presence, home and time.
Here, we ask the artist about his life as a painter and about the obsessions that keep him awake in his studio while the rest of the world sleeps.
15 November 2023
