An Invitation from the Heart-Shaped Island
- Sana Obaid
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
For many people, the Isle of Eigg is known for its dramatic landscapes, renewable energy system, and extraordinary story of community ownership. For me, however, Eigg became something far more personal: a place that transformed my understanding of what art can mean in people’s lives.
My connection with the island began not through tourism, but through mythology, ancient standing stones, and the invisible pull of ley lines.
As a Pakistani artist based in Glasgow, I have long been drawn to stories of the divine feminine — women who appear throughout folklore as guardians, warriors, healers, and forces of nature. While researching Scottish myths and oral histories, I encountered stories connected to Eigg: tales of strong women, spiritual presences, and the “Big Woman” once feared by sailors crossing these waters. There was something about the island that stayed with me long before I ever arrived there.
In 2024, I travelled to Eigg through a residency awarded by Visual Arts Scotland and the Bothy Project. I expected inspiration from the landscape. What I did not expect was to encounter a community whose values would profoundly shape my artistic journey.
I met islanders whose lives reflected ideas I had been searching for within my own practice: interdependence, resilience, collective responsibility, and care. I spent time listening to local women speak about memory, land, mythology, and belonging. Conversations happened in kitchens, on walks, and by the sea. I realised that what makes Eigg remarkable is not only its scenery, but the people who have chosen, together, to imagine another way of living.
One person who deeply inspired me was Camille Dressler, historian, writer, and one of the key cultural voices of the island. Originally from France, Camille settled on Eigg decades ago and became closely involved in the movement that transformed the island into one of the world’s most celebrated examples of community ownership. Through her work with the Isle of Eigg Heritage Trust and her writing on the island’s history, she has helped preserve not only Eigg’s stories, but its spirit.
What moved me most about Camille was not simply her knowledge of history, but her belief in community as a living practice. She was among the people who invited me to bring my work to Solas Eige SCIO and to become the first artist to hold an exhibition in St Columba’s Church since its recent community acquisition.
That invitation felt deeply meaningful.
Eigg is already internationally admired for becoming community-owned in 1997 and for building one of the world’s leading small-scale renewable electricity systems. But recently, the community achieved another extraordinary milestone by purchasing St Columba’s Church through Solas Eige SCIO. Reading about the determination, fundraising, and collective effort behind the purchase moved me profoundly. It reminded me that places survive not because of institutions alone, but because ordinary people choose to care for them together.
My upcoming exhibition, From the Heart of a Mother, will open inside this newly reclaimed church space.
For me, the exhibition is not simply about showing artwork. It is about creating a space for reflection, compassion, healing, and human connection. During my time on Eigg, I will also offer art workshops for islanders and visitors, creating opportunities for participation and exchange beyond the exhibition itself.
Increasingly, I believe art must move beyond elite institutions and become part of everyday life again. Art should not exist only behind the polished walls of galleries and museums; it should create spaces where people can gather, reflect, question, heal, and reconnect with one another.
That belief has shaped my recent work internationally.
Earlier this year, during the Blue Night Festival in Nuremberg, I presented a public performance titled Love for Peace or DeWar inside the ruins of St Katharina’s Church, a church destroyed during the Second World War that now stands as a memorial site in the centre of the city. Over two days, I built a circular wall around myself brick by brick in silence, before later inviting audiences to exchange roses for bricks, dismantling the wall together through acts of participation and care.
The performance asked simple but urgent questions: Can love become stronger than fear? Can we dismantle the walls we inherit? Can art help us remember our shared humanity?
Looking back now, as I prepare to exhibit inside St Columba’s Church on Eigg, I no longer believe it is a coincidence that both projects emerged within church spaces.
One church carries the scars of war and destruction. The other represents collective hope and renewal through community action. Yet both spaces speak about memory, resilience, and the human need to come together in times of fracture and uncertainty.
For me, churches have become more than religious structures. They are spaces where people gather to search for meaning, vulnerability, contemplation, and healing. At a time when so much of the world feels divided by fear, conflict, and isolation, I feel increasingly drawn toward creating work that invites people back into dialogue with one another.
This journey is also deeply personal.
Growing up in Pakistan, I became aware early on of the visible and invisible walls shaping women’s lives. Later, the 2013 terrorist attack on a school in Peshawar profoundly affected my understanding of fear, protection, and division. These experiences continue to inform my artistic and spiritual inquiry today.
After moving to Scotland, I completed my MFA at the Glasgow School of Art on a Saltire Scholarship, graduating with distinction and receiving the Chairman’s Medal for Best Student in the School of Fine Art. Yet beyond awards and exhibitions, what matters most to me now is creating work that contributes meaningfully to society.
Not art as decoration alone, but art as service.
This is why returning to Eigg feels so important.
The island reminds me that another way of living is possible — one rooted not in isolation, competition, or fear, but in cooperation, care, and collective imagination. In many ways, Eigg itself feels like a living artwork: a social sculpture shaped over decades by ordinary people choosing community over separation.
To be welcomed into that story, even briefly, feels like an immense privilege.
And to present work inside a church newly reclaimed by community hands feels especially powerful at a time when the world urgently needs spaces that bring people together rather than pull them apart.
Perhaps that is why Eigg continues to inspire people far beyond its shores.
Not because it is perfect, but because it reminds us what becomes possible when human beings choose hope over fear, and community over division.
About the Exhibition “From the Heart of a Mother” by Camille Dressler
St Columba’s church has been a venue for temporary exhibitions since 2023, as a way of demonstrating its potential as a heritage centre and offering a place of welcome, contemplation, and discovery. This year, Solas Eige is hosting “From the Heart of a Mother”, a deeply moving solo exhibition by Glasgow-based Pakistani artist Sana Obaid, hosted at St Columba’s Church from 30th June to 5th July 2026. Sana, who first connected with the Isle of Eigg community during a Bothy Project residency in 2024, brings a profoundly personal and universal voice to this exhibition. As a mother herself, she responds to the ongoing genocide in Gaza through the eyes, heart, and instincts of maternal grief. Her work channels the pain, empathy, and fierce protectiveness that lie at the core of motherhood, both human and earthly.
The exhibition presents large-scale etchings and a delicate porcelain installation that speak to the vulnerability of children in conflict. Suspended children’s garments appear to float in a ghostly wind—weightless yet heavy with absence, invoking bodies lost but not forgotten. These works are not just portraits of loss, but cries from the heart of a mother—grieving, protective, unyielding. Sana’s sculptural forms, shaped from fragile porcelain, echo war-torn landscapes through a maternal lens—offering both mourning and quiet resistance. In extending her
perspective from personal motherhood to Mother Earth—wounded yet enduring—the exhibition becomes a sacred space of remembrance, compassion, and resilience. Aligned with Solas Eige’s mission to reclaim St Columba’s as a place of healing and gathering, Sana’s project affirms art’s capacity to hold pain and transform it into compassion, insight, and communal reflection. In addition to the exhibition, Sana will offer her time and talent for free as a gesture of solidarity with Solas Eige’s values and vision for a printmaking workshop for the island community and an evening talk sharing her artistic and spiritual process.
I look forward to welcoming you all to the Exhibition.
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