About Moorish Studio
Geometric design for everyday life.
The Work
Tasneem's work explores the tension between rigid order and assimilation — using the precise geometric patterns of the Islamic architectural tradition as a vehicle to examine his own experience of managing clashing identities and expectations.
Background
Born in London to Bangladeshi immigrants, he grew up navigating the expectations of his faith and community alongside those of the wider culture around him. The tensions that came with that — between tradition and assimilation, between competing, often rigid sets of values — were ones he carried quietly for years.
The post 9/11 era sharpened those tensions considerably, as they did for many Western-born Muslims — a period where Western Muslims found themselves having to almost choose a side, caught between communities that both demanded loyalty. For many, that unease never fully went away — it just became part of how they moved through the world. It left him questioning whether those identities could coexist at all rather than simply conflict.
Process
With a background in mathematics and a long interest in art, studying the geometric patterns of the Islamic architectural tradition became a way to explore that question while bridging a connection to his heritage. These are intricate designs governed by strict mathematical rules, repeating and expanding infinitely according to a logic unchanged for centuries. He studied them under Ustadh Mohamad Al Janabi, an Iraqi artist from a multi-generational lineage of geometric practitioners. Ceramics came later — a medium he took to for its unpredictability and fluidity, and one that presented an irresistible challenge: to set those two things against each other on the same surface.
He draws the patterns by hand before using CAD and 3D printing to produce the molds. After the first of multiple firings, he applies his own glazes — and that's where his control ends. The glazes move and pool across the surface in ways that can't be predicted or corrected. He has learned to work with that.
Tasneem now lives in Washington DC with his wife, two sons, and two cats.