Illustrating Geopolitics State of Power 2025

4 Febrero 2025

4 minutos de lectura

For the 13th edition of State of Power, TNI worked with Pakistani illustrator Shehzil Malik, who shared reflections on the artwork and the process.

Longread de

Shehzil Malik

Portrait by Kayhan Anjum Suleman. — Shehzil Malik

Shehzil Malik is a designer/ illustrator with a focus on socio-political topics, women’s narratives and feminism. She works on social impact projects through digital art, publications, textile and public art. She was a contributing artist and panellist at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2019 and has previously worked as an art director at Ogilvy & Mather, Lahore. Her commercial practice includes clients like Penguin Random House, Oxfam, Malala Fund, Marvel, New York Times, GIZ and Google. http://www.shehzil.com

Illustrating Geopolitics

I really enjoyed working on this project on the current geopolitics of capitalism! It was helpful to read academics making sense of wide-ranging topics like climate change, technology and the many systemic inequalities we see worldwide.

As a Pakistani who has lived in the US and now in Europe, it was personally illuminating to zoom out and try to understand how these societies are responding to our rapidly changing world. I am currently in Berlin, where state repression is rife when it comes to Palestine, but I am also exposed to a migrant-rich leftwing discourse that challenges the dominant narrative.

These essays are similarly written by a range of writers from different backgrounds, each one bringing their own analysis to migration, technological advancements, ecological degradation and the rise of right-wing extremism. It’s reassuring to know that these voices are out there, sounding the alarm and speaking up against imperialisms, the re-articulation of colonial exploitation, and against violence. They also offer ideas and responses that leverage people-led movements and principles of cooperation, while having the humility to accept that the future remains unknown.

It was also a great exercise to think about how to visually depict these complex ideas where there are no ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’ but a confluence of actors and their interests. I tried to play with cartographic forms and textures to connect the past colonial order to the new restructurings of our world. The old ruling order tries to recreate itself, but is undergoing seismic shifts.

The topics raised are also interconnected - the rise of AI is connected to military responses, which is connected to US strategic interests, which is connected to the reason for the BRICS formation, which is connected to controlling economic networks, which is connected to the squashing of dissent. So I chose a limited color palette and set of symbols to represent these connections. The world, and our lives, remain more connected than ever.

It was also a pleasure to work with Nick Buxton, who gave me full artistic freedom as well as thoughtful feedback to think through concepts. Reading the essays and looking at the artwork, it feels like things are a bit grim right now, but the first step is to articulate what we’re seeing happen in our world, and the next step is to try to imagine something different and better.