Why Artist Misha Japanwala Turned My Nipple into a Sculpture

I didn’t need a pushup bra in middle school, but I had one anyway, stuffing it to stave off the “itty bitty titty” allegations of male classmates. By adulthood, one of my breasts was a C cup and the other a B cup. My breasts were bigger, but I didn’t feel better. Beauty standards, ultimately, are a losing game. So, when I heard that Pakistani artist and fashion designer Misha Japanwala was offering shame-smashing nipple casts ahead of “Sarsabzi,” her second solo show at Hannah Traore Gallery, I jumped at my chance to be healed of this preteen trauma.

Of course, I wasn’t the only one. “I actually got a few hundred DMs,” Japanwala told me in her New Jersey home, which also houses her studio. There, she coated one of my breasts (I chose the droopy one) in thick, cold silicone, then pallid plaster, creating a mold she filled with resin, creating a cast.

While studying at Parsons School of Design, Japanwala realized it’s not clothes she loves, but the body—which unites her fluid fashion design and fine art. After graduating in 2018, Japanwala worked at Elle, then New York fashion label Proenza Schouler.

Her first solo show, “Beghairati Ki Nishaani – Traces of Shamelessness,” opened to acclaim at Hannah Traore in May 2023. By then, Japanwala had been profiled in both Indian and American Vogue and molded Cardi B’s body for the singer’s viral pregnancy announcement. Conservative trolls decried Japanwala’s audacity online, inspiring her to make “shamelessness” the central tenet of her work and add it to the name of her debut exhibition. The show featured torsos, hands, and breasts cast from Karachi activists, artists, writers—and anonymous folks who answered an open call. Throughout her various series, Japanwala shines a careful spotlight on the real details of bodies that have been marginalized, highlighting their inherent beauty.

“It was just such a beautiful, meaningful, emotional experience to invite anyone,” Japanwala said of her first open call. She started structuring entire series around open calls posted solely on her Instagram story, scheduling molds on a first-come-first-served basis with anyone nearby via DM.

Her next solo presentation, a booth at last year’s EXPO Chicago titled “Topographies,” presented casts solicited entirely from her second open call. There, Japanwala turned her attention to the full figures that fashion and art often overlook. She also swapped the metallic finishes that characterized her earlier work for more vivacious palettes. “I’ve always been scared of bright colors—I wanted to torture myself,” Japanwala deadpanned in her living room. These colors evoke unapologetic joy and defy stale dictums that fat women should favor dark, slimming hues. The artworks’ matte finishes ensure that every pore, fold, and blemish shines through.

Japanwala considers every new series its own fashion collection, experimenting with unique aesthetic elements—like bold colorways—while adhering to her consistent “house code,” to be shameless. “Sarsabzi” builds on “Topographies” by continuing to celebrate full figures. Sarsabzi is the Urdu word for verdant, or abundant, after all. With this latest exhibition, however, Japanwala is now paying particular attention to scars and stretch marks, likening them to Earth’s natural wonders, from mesmerizing forest fungal growths to the jagged edges of Victoria Falls.

As Japanwala’s fame expands, so does her reach. “Sarsabzi” presents her widest array of sitters yet, in terms of nationalities and professions. It’s also the series in which sitters have had the most control over her work to date.

“In previous times, people would say ‘Why don”t you help me choose?’” Japanwala explained. “I really wanted to take my subjectivity out of it—so I asked muses to be the ones to decide the part of the body that was molded.” Thighs and bellies abound. One muse specifically asked to cast her stomach’s stretch marks. When Japanwala pulled off the mold, that sitter marvelled at their joint success in capturing her skin’s unique marks, and how it rewired her mind. It was the first time she felt happy to see her stretch marks, Japanwala recounted.

Another sitter, Philadelphia-based artist Lemon Foster, told Japanwala that after a long struggle with mental health, she’d discovered life-saving medication which made her gain 100 pounds in four months. Foster arrived at Japanwala’s studio with this weight gain on her mind. She had Japanwala cast her stomach, down to its moles, scars, and a Bandaid from biopsies, encapsulating new dimensions to her body’s biography. “Misha’s artwork also encompasses the process of listening to her muses’ stories and connecting to them, all while making their ephemeral forms permanent,” Lemon said over email.

Casts like Lemon’s sit atop plinths throughout “Sarsabzi,” offering 360-degree views. Wall-mounted collages of body parts surround them. The show also includes the New York debut of a new series where Japanwala frames details of scars and stretchmarks, declaring them art. “What does it mean to document our existence in a way that is totally uninhibited by aesthetics and visual preferences and conditioning?” she said.

“I think body positivity—in the way that we’ve seen it—feels like a form of shaming in itself, where it’s like, you must love your body, you can’t think badly about it,” Japanwala observed. She prefers “body neutrality,” which goes deeper than artificially embracing idiosyncrasies, “to meet your body where it’s at, to be grateful for it and to understand and appreciate it and allow it to carry you through life, while still accepting that there are going to be days where you don’t feel great.”