Art in Focus: “Rising Waters” by Heraa Khan

Rising Waters, 2021; Painting; 24k gold leaf and gouache on wasli paper; Heraa Khan: Born 1989, Lahore, Pakistan; University of Alberta Museums, University of Alberta Museums Art Collection; 2025.7.1

When a viewer encounters a miniature painting by artist Heraa Khan, they are being invited to look closer at an intricate world, one where size and detail are closely bound. In her 2021 work Rising Waters, this world illuminates the perils of climate change, particularly in her home country of Pakistan. In the painting, a diptych is embedded in a striking field of gold leaf. The image on the left shows a shoreline scene lined with flora and fauna in the foreground. In the right-hand panel, the shoreline is submerged in water, with only the treetops visible. 

The two side-by-side panels present a contrasting before and after. As Khan notes, these stark images are also based on lived experiences, “I grew up in Pakistan, where I witnessed the devastating impact of flooding firsthand. I’ve seen how water can erase entire landscapes, homes, and histories in an instant.” The work is also a reminder that “we are all entangled in the same ecosystem, there is no separation between us and the natural world.” For Khan, the painting ultimately asks us to slow down and “to pay attention, and to connect deeply with the environment, with what we have, and with what we are losing.”

Khan’s work deeply resonates with the changing environment and climate emergency facing Canada. In a time where wildfires and water shortages are now commonplace in Alberta, for example, Khan’s work highlights the urgency to address our life on earth. In Rising Waters, this urgency is also communicated through the gold leaf that surrounds the two images. Khan writes, “The gold is not merely decorative; it speaks to reverence, and to what we risk losing.”

Heavily shaped by Persian, Chinese and Mughal visual culture, miniature painting is characterized by its small, detailed imagery. Created as illustrations for books or folios, these richly painted works were often commissioned by wealthy patrons and rulers. This genre was at its height of production in Persia during the 14th to 16th century, where workshops of papermakers, calligraphers and painters worked together to develop manuscripts. By the turn of the 20th century, conflict and colonialism across Southwest Asia saw widespread theft from royal libraries, which were sold “to European and American dealers and collectors who had developed a taste for richly illustrated texts.”

Heraa Khan is a Pakistani artist based in Edmonton whose contemporary work is rooted in the tradition of Mughal and Persian miniature painting. She is a graduate of the internationally recognized National College of Arts (NCA) in Pakistan, an institution that has critically contributed to the resurgence of miniature painting across the globe. Since arriving in Alberta in 2023, she has most recently exhibited at the Art Gallery of St. Albert and participated in numerous artist-in-residence programs in Edmonton. Rising Waters is her first work in the University of Alberta Museums Art Collection. 

This web story is part of the University of Alberta Museums Art Collection Spotlight Series, a collection of web stories aimed to share works of art from the University of Alberta Museums Art Collection with the world. Posted monthly, these stories connect works of art in the Collection to important matters on our campus and in our world.

1. Interview with the Artist, May 4, 2025

2. Ibid

3. Ibid

4. Ibid

5. Sheila Blair, "Making and mutilating manuscripts of the Shahnama," in Smarthistory, July 27, 2020, accessed January 15, 2026, https://smarthistory.org/making-mutilating-shahnama/.

6. Ibid