Jaya Gataaura speaks with Suleman Aqeel Khilji about memory, place and the hazy landscapes in his paintings, currently on view in Thaddaeus Ropac’s Like Music in the Blood.
I interviewed Suleman at his studio in Angel, though not for long; I had caught him in the middle of a move.
He welcomed me into the space, offering me tea and shifting an enormous stretched canvas so I could explore the space more freely. The room was stacked with paintings, newspaper clippings, notes, books and personal photographs. The air was rich with rabbit skin glue and sawdust.
Khilji is currently exhibiting at Thaddaeus Ropac’s group show Like Music in the Blood, where he sits alongside his contemporaries: Benjamin Orlow, Galli and others. His paintings stand stark on the walls of Ely House, its neoclassical façades providing an enlightening contrast. The show will be on view until 1 October 2026.
Khilji was born in Quetta, in southwestern Pakistan, and spent much of his childhood travelling through Balochistan with his father, a civil engineer.
He began drawing in childhood, making portraits of his family members, who began to know him as “the artist”. Painting started later, when he studied fine art at Balochistan University, before moving to the National College of Arts in Lahore. In 2022, he moved to London to study at the Royal Academy Schools; it’s been his home ever since.
JG: When you paint, is it your past that you’re trying to see?
SAK: I don’t think in those terms. I don’t think about it like I have to make Pakistan. It’s the thought process that’s originated somewhere… Painting gives me a chance to visit a space that I’ve been to before. It’s not nostalgic, it’s much more about the feeling.
JG: How do places enter the paintings?
SAK: Somehow I would paint a wall. I would paint a brick wall from here, but it appeared as if it’s somewhere in Balochistan. Then I started an image of Balochistan and later, it turned into this greenish kind of moss, and it felt like it was somewhere here.
JG: Are your paintings supposed to be seen all together, like they are all part of the same scene?
SAK: If you take out a work from my previous shows, and then you take out a work from a future show and you put them all together. There’s this hint of them belonging to one space, maybe urban, maybe wilderness. The time might change, maybe there’s daytime in some of them, maybe there’s nighttime in some of them. But then somehow there’s some idiosyncrasy.
JG: Are you an observer of the world?
SAK: I’m always looking around. I’m interested in looking. I’m looking at the light. I’m looking at how one’s dressed, how one’s moving. Sometimes it’s a little gesture, the way someone walks or the way someone moves, that reminds you of someone.
JG: So the characters aren’t specific people?
SAK: The characters that you would see, they aren’t definite. It’s very fluid. It might remind one of a person or thing. And I think that fluidity is needed.
JG: What do you say when people ask what your paintings mean?
SAK: People often come to me and ask: ‘What does this mean?’ And I’m like, ‘You’re looking at it.’ The whole set rule of education and everything somehow has just become a formality… it’s magical, how people have their understanding of the world… You don’t have to be this crazy educated person to understand a painting. Painting is visual.
JG: Are there any encounters that have stood out to you?
SAK: The best kind of interpretation that I got was from a tea boy in Lahore. He was in our college where we were studying; he used to serve tea to our teachers. And he used to say some amazing stuff. He would recite poetry. Then later, I met a shepherd on a mountain, and he was the wisest of wise kind of person I’ve met.
JG: How do you know when a painting is finished?
SAK: I’ve taken years on some paintings. I want to look at the painting like you’ve paused it; it’s not finished and it’s still happening. It’s just paused at that moment.
JG: Is the haze part of that?
SAK: Yes. My paintings appear hazy, but if you look at them, they clear slowly, and gradually, you see clarity. Things appear very naturally, the motifs appear quite distant. I want to see the work as if it is being seen 200 years later, like something excavated, a future memory.
JG: Tell me about your time at the Royal Academy.
SAK: After graduating in 2011, I wrote to the Royal Academy asking if I should apply for their three-year programme. They replied and said work for three to four more years, then apply. The practice that I did after graduation was very hard, because being in your studio alone is very tough. But then I practised for ten more years, and I applied and got in. In those ten years, I really found a way of being with myself. If you leave me anywhere alone, I would be very happy. It’s a very peaceful state. Patience, a lot of patience. I think it was good that I didn’t come to the Royal Academy before.
JG: What does being alone in the studio actually feel like when you’re working?
SAK: Sometimes I feel, reaching the brush and the canvas, the gap between them, the whole world comes between those two. There are things that stop me from painting, the things we have to do in the world, the emails I have to reply to.
JG: How do you take criticism?
SAK: Anything in the world can be criticised: good weather, warm weather, cold weather, a good person. But what to take is very important. If there’s something said by someone and it stays in my mind and it makes sense, it’ll do something later. Sometimes it also gives you a bit of fuel.
JG: Are you competitive, then?
SAK: I want to beat my previous show.
