Ammna Sheikh

Ammna Sheikh is a British-Pakistani artist based in Edinburgh. She graduated from Edinburgh College of Art with a degree in Intermedia and works across printmaking and textiles. She grew up around handmade craft in her family, and that is still the root of everything she makes. Her work is about how craft traditions travel across generations and across borders. 

The Richer a Persian, The Finer His Rugs - Printed card and wrapping paper on a wooden frame, 2024

Unstructured - Digital illustration, 2025

She uses embroidery, screen-printing, weaving and painting, all by hand, all slow. She draws on visual languages from the Middle East and South Asia, on color, pattern and texture, to think about identity, migration and what colonialism did to the cultures she comes from. She has won the RSA Patrons Award and the Edinburgh Printmakers Residency Award, and presented her first solo exhibition in 2025.

Seven Colours of Persia - Screenprint on gold paper, 2024

There Is No Thorn Without a Rose - Printed card and wrapping paper on a wooden frame, 2024

Her piece Seven Colors of Persia reinterprets Kashi tile-making and muqarnas through screen-printing, translating architectural forms into layered compositions. The Richer a Persian, The Finer His Rugs weaves together proverbs in Urdu, Persian, Arabic and English, with imperfections left in on purpose to show the hand. Unstructured takes the geometric order of Kashi tiles apart, fragmenting and rotating and layering them until the grid breaks down.