What Happens When an Artist Paints the Moments We Usually Ignore? Anika Mariam Ahmed Shows Us
- Cake
- Sep 5
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 9
Finding Magic in the Everyday
At Cake, we’re always drawn to the quiet details—the everyday things that often go unnoticed but carry so much feeling. Whether it’s a pattern that sparks nostalgia or a handmade object that feels just right in your space, we believe beauty lives in the little things.
That’s exactly why we were so taken with Anika Mariam Ahmed’s paintings.
This artist is quietly transforming our perception of home, time, and the beauty that surrounds us. Her work captures fleeting, ordinary moments and turns them into something contemplative and moving. There’s a stillness to her pieces, a sense of reflection that really speaks to how we think about home, not just as a place, but as a feeling.
We sat down with Anika to talk about her creative process, the role of time and memory in her work, and what it means to find wonder in the everyday.
As a child, were there moments when you felt especially tuned in to the visual world—light, colors, everyday scenes? Do you think your way of seeing then already hinted at the artist you’d become?
From a young age, I’d wake up early each morning and be at my desk. In those quiet moments before everyone else woke up, I would be drawing and crafting away. I would collect all kinds of paper and materials for drawing and making things. It was my way of making sense of the world. Now, working with oil pastels on paper, I feel like I am still connected to that child to some extent, definitely through the medium at least. I have the same drive to create, I guess. I am doing the same kind of activities I was always doing.
How did your education in Bangladesh compare with your MFA experience in the Netherlands? Were there moments in that transition that helped shape your artistic voice in unexpected ways?
My bachelor’s degree at the academy in Dhaka was a four-year program focused on thorough training in drawing and painting, studying from life landscapes, models, and still lives. Outside the academy in my bedroom-studio, I painted more experimentally and exhibited those works across the city. I studied English literature at another university which was a formative education in society, culture, and history.
The MFA at the Frank Mohr Institute in Groningen encourages experimentation and fostering your own visual language. With 24/7 studio access and a small, diverse group of peers from around the world, the programme was a place for critical dialogues on art and society and to try to develop your own, individual voice.
In hindsight, these very different kinds of education in art academies, in Dhaka and in Groningen, have shaped my work. I still put on the lens acquired from my literature studies, too.
Both Bangladesh and the Netherlands have such different tempos. Has living in these two places influenced your creative process or in what you choose to paint?
The fast pace of Dhaka definitely influenced my early work when I was painting crowded scenes and social dynamics, and the experience of being an individual and a woman in a crowded megacity. I explored the city a lot in those years-on foot, rickshaw, or by car- and Dhaka required me to be constantly hyper-alert of my surroundings. In paintings, I expressed that tension through narration and symbols.
My process has changed in Groningen. The way I move through the city is very different. I wander, bike, and notice my surroundings without the tension that Dhaka requires. I can slow down, daydream, and pay attention to quieter details.
It reminds me of my childhood in Dhaka, when looking back, I experience that time being long and slow-paced, in the safe surroundings of family.
Do you find that living in the Netherlands has changed your relationship to “home” as a concept? How do you express that in your work?
I moved from Dhaka to the Netherlands eleven years ago. Coming here alone, I had to build everything from scratch—starting with connections during art school, then meeting my Dutch partner, and now raising our children together. Over time, I have built my home here, and I am getting more rooted.
The objects that are in our house also play a role in making this place home. They are not valuable in the traditional sense, but they hold our experiences and memories and are thereby precious. I often paint these objects—laundry, dishes, things that hold the trace of what we do and care for every day. I just painted a clothesline with my son’s shorts and my baby daughter’s jumpsuit hanging on it. I loved putting that jumpsuit on her, and it holds memories of these first months of putting it on her, watching her in it as she slowly grew out of it. I washed it one last time before passing it on to another new mother. So the objects I choose to paint often reflect the care and home that I have found here, and painting them is my way of honoring that.
Are there elements of your upbringing in Bangladesh that still quietly find their way into your work, even in these new, Dutch domestic scenes?
My mother would make me take notice of small moments of beauty. She would pick wildflowers from the roadside and leave them by my bed—a gesture she still continues today. When my sister visited a few months back, my mom sent beli flowers in a little bag with her. When it would rain in the monsoon, we would go out with her to get wet in the rain and pick up mangoes that fell from the trees.
I think those experiences and memories influence me deeply. Now, when I walk with my toddler around the block, we often stop to look at the flowers on the side of the road, a road sign, or something lying on the ground. Sometimes he makes me stop if I am hurrying.
I experience partially and by proxy that sense of wonder and discovery that he has for the world around him, and I cherish it. I try to have that kind of feeling in my paintings—this paying close attention to the immediate world around us. Read about how you benefit from being surrounded by art!
Your paintings capture the everyday realities of fatherhood in a way that remains rare in the art world. This approach is both refreshing and moving, as it moves away from traditional ideas of masculinity to reveal a more honest and vulnerable side. Why do you think it’s important to share this perspective of fatherhood in your art, and what do you hope viewers take from it?
I titled one of my early drawings of my husband and son Mannenliefde—a Dutch word often used for love between men, usually in a queer context. As a non-native speaker, I enjoy playing with language like that. Growing up in Bangladesh, I was very aware of how rigid gender roles were, at home, among friends, and in the wider society. I always questioned what it means to be “masculine” or “feminine” and how those ideas or qualities can shape our roles. Painting my husband as a father is part of that questioning. I paint him caring for our children, being present, being gentle. In a world that often defines masculinity through power or dominance, I want to show the softer, tender side that also exists, where male physical strength is also in stooping down to take care of small hands and feet.
I think it’s important for our children to see that—that care and tenderness aren't tied to gender, that these are wonderful human qualities that keep the world going.
You’ve spoken about the luxury of a free afternoon as a kind of right. How does that idea of reclaiming time show up in your painting practice?
I find it necessary to claim time from agents of the economy and industry, it's a human right and not a luxury, to me. I need that time to just be and process my thoughts and feelings, to choose to give that time to those who matter, and for mundane tasks that even matter and need to be done. I would rather take time to do my dishes and get lost in all the forms and colours that I see and in my thoughts that stray, where the alternative could be to work in employment where I would have to give that time away for a cause which I don't care for, even if it would mean having more financial stability. As a young person, I had to fight a good fight to be able to pursue a study and career in the arts, where my family wished for my financial security and stability, and social acceptance. Being a painter allows me to claim time, to spend time looking, thinking, feeling, making, and just being present in the world.
It is the ultimate luxury! I hope it is the kind of atmosphere that I am also able to communicate in my paintings by what I choose to paint and the way I paint them.
We love the triptych room divider and the vase you painted on; it transforms a simple household object into a piece of art. How do you think artworks integrated into everyday interior objects change the way we experience our homes? I’ve always thought about bringing art closer to everyday life, bringing the high and “low” arts closer together. In an early exhibition, I transformed the gallery/project space into a living room, where I painted on household objects like room dividers, chairs, and barstools. Visitors could spend time there hanging out as in a living room and be surrounded by paintings as in the context of a home.
I was challenging the idea that art has to be in an exclusive, white space, and saying that art could be felt and admired in a space that feels warm and accessible.
I see art in many objects that are not traditionally associated with the high arts, and I think it adds quality to life to surround yourself with things you care about. I am thinking of William Morris and Sōetsu Yanagi’s “The Beauty of Everyday Things”.
At Cake, we believe the objects we live with shape how we feel at home. Your work captures the quiet beauty of everyday life—how do you see art and daily objects contributing to a sense of presence and belonging? The kind of objects or still life that I paint are everyday, ordinary objects that have traces of our use. For me, they hold routines, connection among the people who use them, and care.
They carry meaning through use and because of the people who use them. By painting them, I try to give importance to human connections and our capacity and need for care. Read more bout personalizing your home interior in the era of mass production
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