Sarmed Mirza is an award-winning British-Asian multidisciplinary artist and BAFTA Scotland New Talent-nominated filmmaker based in Scotland. His practice spans drawing, graphite, charcoal, ink, painting, writing, and visual storytelling, and is grounded in sustained attention, close looking, and lived experience.

At the centre of his work sits Zero Ground, an ongoing conceptual and philosophical framework that asks how we live, look, and remain human inside fractured systems.

It is a space before certainty, before ideology hardens, and before positions become fixed. From this ground, his work explores contradiction, memory, violence, tenderness, humour, and hope, often at the same time.

Since beginning his studio practice in 2018, Sarmed’s journey has moved from classical portraiture toward expressive abstraction and conceptual series work.

A formative encounter with a painting by Georges Braque at MoMA redirected his attention away from representation alone and toward emotional charge, rhythm, and poetic compression.

Within Zero Ground, several bodies of work unfold:

ReGenesis examines renewal after collapse through modular abstraction, repetition, and variation. Built from hundreds of small painted units, the work rewards slow looking, resisting instant comprehension and inviting viewers to experience change through accumulation rather than spectacle.

The Handshake, developed alongside his book Zero Ground: The Handshake, uses drawing and print to confront power, agreement, contamination, and uneasy intimacy in a world that insists on binaries while functioning through contradiction.

His Monument Valley series draws on myth, cinema, childhood memory, and migration. Using tiny 2 × 3 inch oil paintings, the work plays with scale to suggest that vast emotional and political landscapes can be carried in fragments.

Across all media, Sarmed’s work is shaped by a refusal to rush. Scale is used deliberately, sometimes intimate, sometimes expansive, to slow the viewer down and return attention to the act of seeing itself. Rather than offering answers, the work creates space for uncertainty, reflection, and quiet recognition.

His practice is less concerned with persuasion than with presence. It asks what becomes visible when we stop performing certainty and allow complexity to remain unresolved.

Recent exhibitions and recognition include the Royal Sottish Academy, Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition, Scottish Portrait Awards, John Moores Painting Prize second stage, and Paisley Art Institute.

Awards

Winner - Monument Valley, Silent Witness (Untitled 1) - Art Req Ltd Award at 136th Annual Paisley Art Institute Exhibition 2025

Monument Valley The Silent Witness Triptych selected for John Moores Prize 2nd stage 2025.

Finalist - Portrait of K in Scottish Prize for Fine Art 2023

Finalist - Murree Man in Scottish Portrait Awards 2022

Shortlisted - Mogford Prize for Food & Drink Writing. Mission Pulao. 2017

Nominated for BAFTA Scotland New Talent Award for feature film 'An act of terror' 2009

Selected Press

Featured in Artmag, review of the SSA 127th Annual Exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh.

Membership

• Paisley Art Institute (Est. 1876)
• Society of Scottish Artists (SSA) (Est. 1891)
• Glasgow Art Club (Est. 1867) Associate Member
• Visual Arts Scotland (VAS)
• Scottish Artist Union
• Co-founder and member of Circum|Stance Collective

Exhibitions

Royal Scottish Academy Bicenterary - 127th Society of Scottish Artists Annual. ReGenesis: Nocturne. 2026

Society of Scottish Artists (SSA). Life with Water online edition 2025

VIsual Arts Scotland 'Thread that pulls' 30x30 exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy. 2025

Common Ground Collective. Group exhibition at The Tabernacle, Nottinghill London. Group exhibition 2025

136th Annual Exhibition Paisley Art Institute, 2025

Art exhibition for the 99%.
The Tabernacle, London. 2025

Gallery of Modern Art
'Our Power' - Delivered 3 drawing and haiku workshops on Racial Microaggressions. Art by participants and video created by Sarmed installed in GoMA. Facilitated by Mental Health Foundation. 2024

Kelvingrove Museum
Short film installed and screened as part of 'Boxes of hope' exhibition facilitated by Mental Health Foundation. 2024

'Leaves in love' Charity Auction 2024 Century 21 Glasgow

Scottish Prize for Fine Art Exhibition 2023 (Glasgow Art Club)

Members Spring Exhibition 2023 (Scottish Arts Club)

Small works exhibition 2023  (Glasgow Art Club)

Murree Man in Scottish Portrait Awards travelling exhibition - Edinburgh Arts Club 2022, Duff House Banff 2022, Glasgow Arts Club 2023

Voice over for exhibits in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow 2022

Winter exhibition 2022 (Glasgow Art Club)

Art of the possible 29th Oct to 4th Dec 2021 (Glasgow Art Club)

Glasgow Art Club Members Winter Exhibition 2021 (Glasgow Art Club)

Reflections of a changing world 15th Sep to 22nd Oct 2021 (Glasgow Art Club)

Members & Friends Summer Exhibition 2021 (Glasgow Art Club)

Dubai Art Fair 2019

Dancing Brushes, Prince George, BC, Canada 2018-2019