In Meray Dil, Meray Musafir, Qinza Najm reclaims the South Asian peyti—a metal trunk still commonly found in households across the region—as both material and metaphor. Once used to store dowries and daily essentials, these heavy, lockable containers predate wheeled luggage and continue to accompany generations through life transitions, migrations, and displacements.

Repurposed into sculptural paintings, the peytis carry layered histories. Najm subjects each surface to cutting, burnishing, and layering—embedding enamel, oil, and found objects into sheets of metal that bear the weight of transit and memory. Sparse, faceless figures and recurring lock motifs hover in and out of view, evoking the tension between visibility and concealment, presence and absence.

Rather than offering a linear narrative, the series holds space for the ambiguity of belonging. It reflects on what we carry with us—emotionally, culturally, materially—when home becomes uncertain. Through this restrained yet deeply charged body of work, Najm creates a tactile language of resilience, where transformation is not aesthetic but embodied.