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NEELA ASMAAN

A Multidisciplinary Residency of Ideas

Neela Asmaan is a multidisciplinary residency of ideas, exploring
the intersections of art, climate, technology, and culture.

Located in the Shigar Valley in northern Pakistan, Neela Asmaan brings together creatives, researchers, technologists, and cultural practitioners to engage in focused inquiry and the development of new work. Rooted in a landscape shaped by ecological fragility and cultural depth, the residency creates space for reflection, and critical dialogue across disciplines.

Founded in 2023, Neela Asmaan operates in one of Pakistan’s most environmentally and culturally significant regions. Through residencies, mentorship programmes, research initiatives, and public engagement projects, it fosters meaningful exchange between local knowledge systems and global practices.

The residency welcomes practitioners from diverse fields including filmmaking,
visual arts, textiles, culinary arts, writing, design, and interdisciplinary research encouraging approaches that move fluidly between disciplines and ways of knowing. Each residency cycle is developed around thematic inquiries, ranging from climate change and sustainable agriculture to food systems, cultural memory, and technological futures.

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To date, Neela Asmaan has hosted 27 emerging and mid-career practitioners across 14 residency cycles. In 2025, the residency expanded its international engagement through exchange programmes with partner institutions, welcoming participants from Spain and Nepal, further strengthening its commitment to cross-cultural dialogue and collaboration.

Beyond individual projects, residents contribute to the cultural life of Shigar through workshops, school programmes, and community-led initiatives. These engagements have reached over 300 students across the region through activities spanning sculpture, animation, poetry, filmmaking, and visual storytelling.

Nurayah Sheikh Nabi reflects on the time spent in Shigar as a Neela Asmaan Artist-in-Residence.

Neela Asmaan is a multi-disciplinary residency of ideas, which thrives on multi-subject investigation carried out by diverse professionals, whilst being immersed in the natural wonder and slow pace of the region. Nurayah is a seasoned artist, curator, parent and educator—who has spent a meaningful two-week period in Shigar working closely with differently abled children at the Skarchen School for special children, becoming a catalyst for change and a stepping stone for the students and the school to explore art education as part of their curriculum.

@nurayahsheikh

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Over three days, for Neela Asmaan community workshops, our artists Mehr Javed and Nurayah Nabi sat with students and teachers, sketching grids, tracing patterns, and finding art in the everyday. What came back to us was more than we expected.

“The highlight of my residency was engaging with the local community through the workshop at Skarchen, the region’s only school for children with disabilities and diverse learning needs. The warmth, curiosity, and enthusiasm of the students and teachers made it one of the most rewarding parts of this journey.” Nurayah Nabi

Mehr Javed noticed something else, a kind of visual instinct already present in the community: “The students took to the grid structure almost instinctively, transcribing patterns from their environment with a nuance that comes from somewhere deeper than observation alone. There’s a geometric fluency that already lives in this community. They were sharp, engaged learners who already knew more than they realised.”

The response to Neela Asmaan - On the road to K2’s Climate Futures Residency has been truly global.
We received applications from across Pakistan and around the world.

We are pleased to introduce the jury guiding this inaugural residency:

Samir Sadrudin
Javeria Masood
Tariq Alexander Qaiser
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy

Swipe through to meet each juror and learn more about their practice and the perspectives they bring to the selection process.

@mr.min554 @sharmeenobaidchinoy @tariq.alexander.qaiser @javeriamasood5

#NeelaAsmaanResidency #ClimateFuturesShigar #NeelaAsmaan #RoadToK2

This July, @nurayahsheikh joins the Neela Asmaan for a residency in Shigar, at our field station.

Working across drawing, printmaking, cooking and teaching, Nurayah’s practice explores estions of embodiment, transference and transformation.

Moving fluidly between the studio, kitchen, classroom and curatorial spaces, she approaches acts of making as forms of inquiry, cultivating conversations around process, perception, memory and learning.

An Associate Professor at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi, Nurayah brings an interdisciplinary perspective to the residency.

During her time in Shigar, she will continue her research through close engagement with people of the village and the systems of everyday life.

Based at the Neela Asmaan Field Station in Shigar, @_mehrjaved is an artist joining our July residency, using the space for research and creative inquiry.

Mehr’s practice explores the relationship between geometry, materiality and time. Working across drawing and painting, she creates Patternscapes built through tessellation and accumulative mark-making. Drawing from architectural forms, urban mappings and indigenous pattern traditions, her work examines how touch and perception shape the way we experience our environment.

Over the course of the residency, Mehr will spend time observing Shigar’s built environment and everyday activites, allowing the context of the region to inform the evolution of her research and practice.

John Muir saw glaciers as creators sculpting the future landscape.

Today, in valleys like Shigar, they are rapidly melting, transforming their role from slow sculptors to sudden catalysts of ecological change. Drawing inspiration from John Muir’s philosophy that the natural world is a living, continuous creation, the Shigar Climate Futures residency explores the practical and cultural weight of environmental loss.

John Muir (1838–1914) was a naturalist and writer best known for his journeys through Alaska’s glaciers. More than a century later, his writings remain a reminder that understanding the past is essential to imagining the future, particularly in mountain regions where climate, landscape and community remain inseparable.

30th June 2026 is the last day to apply for the Shigar Climate Futures Residency

Send your applications via email at neelaasmaan.residency@gmail.com

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