Naz Ikramullah

Naz Ikramullah Ashraf (née Naz Ikramullah) is a British-Canadian artist and film producer of Indian Bengali origin.

Background

Naz was born in London, England to an Indian Bengali family. Her father, Mohammed Ikramullah, later became the first Foreign Secretary of Pakistan and her mother, Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah, was one of the first Muslim women to became a politician and diplomat in the Indian Subcontinent. Her mother, who later served as a Delegate to the United Nations and an Ambassador to Morocco, was a member of the Suhrawardy family of Calcutta, India. She became a Mohajir by moving to West Pakistan, though many of her prominent relatives remained in India and others remained in what would become Bangladesh.

Amongst her uncles she could count Mohammad Hidayatullah, Vice President and Chief Justice of India and Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, Premier of Bengal and Prime Minister of Pakistan. Her siblings include a brother and two sisters: Inam Ikramullah, Salma Sobhan and Princess Sarvath El Hassan of Jordan.

She settled in Canada in the 1970s and was married to the prominent Canadian Urdu short story writer and novelist, Syed Moin Ashraf, until he died in 2003. He claimed to have descended from the Sufi Saint Ashraf Jahangir Semnani and some of his stories include Fatherhood and Reborn. Together, they have a daughter named Aamna.^[1]

Education

Naz was trained as an artist at the Byam Shaw School of Art (BFA) and later specialized in lithography at the Slade School of Fine Art in London. Her prints and collages are in the Library of Congress, the National Gallery of Jordan and the Cartwright Gallery in Bradford, among others.^[2]

Career

Naz designed and wrote a filmstrip for the NFB film Making Faces, which won the First Prize for Art Education in Oakland, California in 1989. She also completed a film regarding the cultural life of Muslim women of the Indian Subcontinent. She teaches painting and printmaking at the Ottawa School of Art.

References