“As a global artist,” writes Ambreen Butt, “I am engaged in the exploration of multiple truths and questions of human rights, war, and violence.” In 1993, Pakistani-born Butt earned a BFA in Indo-Persian manuscript painting from the National College of Arts in Lahore. She relocated to Boston, where she received an MFA from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 1997. Since that time, she has helped to initiate a global renaissance in traditional manuscript painting with artworks rich in detail and political insight.

Butt broadens the visual vocabulary of manuscript painting through her painstaking techniques and additions of collage and text. She stays true to the narrative character of miniature painting by telling the stories of people affected by political conflicts, such as the Pakistani and Afghan children killed by U.S. drone strikes since 2015. “We are bombarded with these terminologies like ‘collateral damage,’” Butt says. “You have no idea that there was a person’s life, and that life was connected with so many lives.”

Today, Butt lives and works in Texas. She has held several artist residencies, at institutions including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Dartmouth University. She has been honored with awards and grants from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, and the Canada Council for the Arts.