Subtitle Labs is delighted to present Underbelly, a solo exhibition by Ajea Zahid, our second exhibition in our new permanent space in Bloomsbury.
Ajea Zahid (b.2000. Karachi) is from Lahore, Pakistan and moved to London in 2025. Ajea graduated from the National College of Arts, Lahore and is currently pursuing her MFA at the Royal College of Arts.
The work centres on the intimacy of the human condition. She works from observations and memory to construct figures that sit somewhere between the deeply familiar and the unknowable. Using the visual language of drawing and painting, her surfaces attempt to locate an emotional truth in the way people exist among, and in relation to one another.
From an early age, her constant relocations meant renegotiating internal ideas of home and belonging. She learned to observe people and places she knew would be temporary. In many ways, painting has become a way to hold onto the transient, to slow down the act of seeing, and to make sense of impermanence.
Underbelly, is exactly that, with an even more zoomed in lens of her raw surroundings. It is an exhibition rooted in unfamiliarity, taking the transient and making it permanent in a visual form. Having never left Pakistan previously, Underbelly provides the audience with Ajea’s unique exposure to London, its gritty and pristine parallels and the people that inhabit the city. The beauty in her work lies in the obvious, the delicate nature in which she portrays emotions and the blindingly obvious environments that we often fail to observe.
Please join us for our private view on the 11th April at 4:30pm
44 Great Russell St, WC1B 3JL
By appointment only:
11th April – 26th April 2026
44 Great Russell St, WC1B 3JL, London
Work Enquiries:
Jason via email or whatsapp:
Hello@subtitlelabs.com
+447710347437