Floating cherubs in twinkling cloud-filled skies, cute little kittens with glittering paws and sparkling McDonald’s french fries. A scroll through crystal artist Sara Shakeel’s Instagram page is like being moon-beamed up to a gleaming and ethereal alien planet.
In the space of just three years, Pakistan-based Shakeel has amassed 910k Instagram followers and collaborated with everyone from Chance the Rapper to luxury house Coach and Dubai-based Huda Beauty, as well as more commercial partnerships with Amazon Prime and Reebok. Her work has been exhibited at Now Gallery in London, and in December, she partnered with Browns Fashion on a range of prints and T-shirts — her signature goldfish motif and shimmering marijuana leaves turned into jewellery. The range attracted an extensive wait-list and was so popular Browns has had to reorder the whole collection. Bestsellers include the crystal kitten hoodie and lips jumper. Sparkly french fries hair slide anyone?
Her crystal creations have captured the fashion world’s imagination. But it’s perhaps no surprise, for sparkles are constantly captivating designers — for Spring/Summer 2020, gems appeared across the runways, with New York brand Area turning them into headdresses and fringed facial jewellery, and Paco Rabanne splashing them across crystal bags in Paris.
But Shakeel could easily not have become an artist at all. “Three years ago I was in the process of becoming a dentist,” says Shakeel. “But my teacher just kept failing me — 16 times in fact. I had no idea what to do next.”
A moment of serendipitous boredom changed her fate. With no formal artistic training, Shakeel picked up her battered old Samsung phone and a stylus pen (she didn’t own a laptop) and began copying and pasting images from the internet — spaceships would be placed within open mouths and flowers blossomed behind skyscrapers. She layered and collaged them all together, adding crystals to make each sparkle. When she decided to post on social media, her career as a collage artist took off rapidly.
“I really don’t know what happened,” says Shakeel on her swift Instagram growth. “People started reposting my works. Sarah Jessica Parker commented on one of my pictures. After that, everyone started sharing my page. I woke up the next morning with 15,000 new followers.”
At this point, Shakeel realised her formerly just-for-fun hobby had some artistic legitimacy. “I saved up and got a laptop. I got Photoshop and started watching YouTube videos for hours on end and taught myself to create images. I wanted my art to look professional. Now I do all of my work on a tablet and laptop.”
But where does Shakeel get her glittering inspiration from? “It is honestly about what I am experiencing, what I have lived, or perhaps what I hope to live, a life I want,” she says. “I’ve always had such a vivid imagination ever since I was a child, so to make images from my emotions feels natural.”
This imagination has seen her reinterpret Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, as well as Pre-Raphaelite paintings and memorable photographs such as Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue (in Shakeel’s image he smokes a crystal-filled spliff with a rose in his wild hair); she juxtaposes this with crystallising London cityscapes, New York subways and towering churches.
“I do have a darker, more trippy side,” reveals Shakeel. “Some of my images in black and white with rainbows shooting out of bodies — these are my darker feelings. I don’t mind how people interpret these, or what they think, I just want my art to be emotive.”
Shakeel’s work now goes beyond her laptop screen, however; she has since branched into creating physical art pieces, setting up images like fried eggs on toast, or toilet rolls, and covering them with Swarovski crystals by hand. “I think that’s where my dentistry background comes in handy,” she laughs, “It takes a lot of patience.” Shakeel can spend anything from a few hours to a few days creating each piece.
Last year, Shakeel was commissioned to create a crystal-adorned pop-up for Chance the Rapper to celebrate his latest album release. The space featured nine rooms filled with crystals and three fully crystallised tables. With a team of 20 art technicians, Shakeel worked around the clock to create the shimmering spectacle in 48 hours.
“Many people had accused me of only being an Instagram artist,” she says. But that changed when Now Gallery approached her to collaborate on an exhibition (which ended last June). She says the idea for her debut installation came instantly. “I wanted to create a dining table complete with tableware and food covered in crystals,” — a play on the Da Vinci masterpiece. Titled The Great Supper, Shakeel worked with four art technicians over 27 days to create the installation — more than 1m glass crystals were used.
Kaia Charles, the exhibition’s curator, says the installation has been so popular due to its vast Instagram appeal. “Sara has the ability to transform very banal, unassuming objects into [something] precious and desirable,” she says. “The installation is effectively an assemblage of an intimate family dinner, but on a purely visual level the work is staggering — glass crystals refract light as you walk around the installation. I’m continually interested in subcultural and counter cultural movements so the way Sara sourced everyday imagery and used crystals to subvert the world view was of keen interest to me.”
Charles thinks Shakeel’s magic is down to her reinterpretation of everyday objects, making art that is democratic and understandable. “Sara has amassed nearly a million followers on Instagram, illustrating how much her work and aesthetic resonates across a wide cross section of design and art enthusiasts. Her work appeals to a broad audience.”
What about those jibes at being only an Instagram artist? “Instagram is one of the influential self-publishing platforms for visually led creative content,” says Charles — in fact, the curator discovers many new artists through the app. And while Shakeel created an installation for the gallery, it was her Photoshopped works that piqued Charles’ interest. “Sara’s works at face value appear to be very simple collages, but she is a master of composition, texture and colour. The pieces are evocative and upfront but also sensual,” she says.
Undoubtedly Shakeel’s images play out well digitally. They look so good with today’s high-resolution smartphones that as part of her current collaboration with Browns, Shakeel created her own Instagram filter, called “Extraordinary”. It allows users to cover themselves and their surroundings in sparkly crystals much like Shakeel’s version of the Colosseum in Rome.
“Everyone loves kittens and glitter, right?” says Lola Okuyiga, special projects buyer at Browns. “The reason Sara connects with so many is that her subject matter is always relatable. It’s appealing in its compelling yet simple nature.”
It seems in this case, all that glitters really isn’t gold.
All images courtesy Sara Shakeel
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