Currently based in Islamabad, Pakistan, she is interested in the synthesis of art making and curation in the context of regional education, history, censorship and social justice. As an artist, Malik explores female identity and sexuality developed within the constraints of patriarchy. Her recent work is a multi-media study of objects from personal archives, where she reconstructs memories, dreams, sights and sensations as way of reconciling with loss. She examines the transformative nature of creativity through investigations of materiality, memory and the processes that lead up to constructing tangible surfaces.
Malik’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Her first solo show, entitled a cage elusive as a shadow took place at Sanat Gallery, Karachi, in 2016. In the same year, she received a Special Commendation from Dentons Art Prize, London, and in 2018 was nominated for the Sovereign Asian Art Prize. Her second solo show, the soul breathes differently, took place at Satrang Art Gallery in Islamabad. Since then, she has regularly shown her work, including at Asia House (London), and COMO Museum of Art (Lahore). She was a participating artist in the Lahore Biennale 2020 as a member of the Pak-Khawateen Painting Club.
As a curator, Malik has been interested in engaging audiences in Pakistan through contemporary art outside traditional art spaces. Under The Creative Process, in 2017, Malik curated Of Other Spaces, followed by River in an ocean, an exhibition co-curated with artist-curator Abdullah Qureshi as a collateral event of the Lahore Biennale 2018. Unmaking History, a group exhibition co-curated with Saher Sohail and Laila Rahman, took place at the Research and Publication Centre in Lahore in 2019.
In 2021, Malik co-edited the international double-blind peer reviewed journal Research in Arts and Education with Abdullah Qureshi, on its issue on The Creative Process: Critical Perspectives on Art, Research, and Education from Pakistan and Beyond. In 2022, Malik will be curating a group exhibition titled Liberating Art from Guantanamo Bay, and co-curating Rebel Objects: Excavating and Unpacking Trauma with Saher Sohail. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Khaas Gallery, Islamabad, in October 2022. Malik received her BFA from the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore in 2012, and her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2015. In the past, she has also worked as Assistant Professor at the NCA.