I Bear Witness by Ambreen Butt | Exhibition
Date and Time
- Thu, Mar 26, 2026 - Sat, May 9, 2026
Location
Gallery Wendi Norris
436 Jackson St
Details
Ambreen Butt | I Bear Witness
🗓️ March 26 - May 9, 2026
đź“Ť Gallery Wendi Norris | 436 Jackson Street
Gallery Wendi Norris proudly presents I Bear Witness, its third solo exhibition with Ambreen Butt (b. 1969, Lahore, Pakistan). The exhibition features a series of eight new works that mark the culmination of a trilogy she began in 2015, through which Butt has rendered visible the lives, names, and stories that acts of violence erase. This final chapter builds upon her series Say My Name (2015–2023), which memorialized children lost to drone warfare, and Lay Bare My Arms (2023), which interrogated American gun culture.
Throughout the series, Butt casts the maternal figure as both subject and witness, an active vessel of testimony rather than a passive symbol of loss. Drawing on religious and cultural traditions that cast the maternal body as a bearer of memory—particularly the icon of the Madonna and Child—Butt positions witnessing as an act of holding and carrying forward fragments of grief, displacement, and care.
Using techniques rooted firmly in tradition, Ambreen Butt (b. 1969, Lahore, Pakistan) creates works that explore the complexities of contemporary global politics, female identity and living as a Muslim in the United States. Employing actions including staining, stitching, cutting, ripping and tacking with repetitive urgency, Butt's painted and collaged works on paper and large-scale resin installations espouse the radiant aesthetics of sacred geometries and Islamic ornamentation.