Zahabiya Gabajiwala – Breathing Life into Empty Spaces

Zahabiya Gabajiwala is the founder of ZA studios in Mumbai, which transforms empty plain spaces into beautiful art filled corners, through paintings, murals and art installations.

Zahabiya Gabajiwala’s childhood was always spent with arts and crafts. She is happy that she was born into a family which appreciated arts. So, when she decided to choose arts as her career it was no surprise. Zahabiya studied fine arts at Jai Hind College, Mumbai and did her masters in commercial art and specialising in set design from Rachna Sansad College of Applied Art and Craft, Mumbai.

Initially, Zahabiya focused on art direction for films and commercials. She worked on the set design for the movie Humpty Sharma ki Dulhaniya, and for various advertisements including the advertisement for parachute hair oil.

In 2016, Zahabiya founded her own visual space design studio, ZA Works, in Mumbai. Initially, she started as an independent artist and used her network and contacts to get commissioned work. She started out by taking advance payment per project. And she invested her earnings to gradually hire and collaborate with artists. The visual space design studio helps transform simple plain surfaces into beautiful art canvases through painting, murals, and installations.

ZA Works is a service-based business that specialises in murals, art installations, decals, furniture customisation, packaging design, branding design, and canvas paintings. They mostly work alongside architects and interior designers and work on both residential and commercial interior projects. Their price range is usually between rs.800 – Rs.1,200 per sq ft – but this can vary depending on the scale of the artwork and the design brief. Lately, they have also been involved in a lot of digital design projects like wallpaper designing.