Baseera Khan (born 1980) is an American visual artist. Known for multimedia exhibitions that showcase sculpture, painting, photography, textiles, and performance art, they have exhibited their work in galleries across the United States and been awarded as a sculptor and emerging artist.[1][2]
Khan uses they/them pronouns.[3][4][5] Their work navigates the political circumstances of their identity as a self-identified queer femme Muslim and "as a feminist, and as a brown Indian-Afghani".[6] They are based in New York City.
Early life and education
Khan was born in 1980 in
Denton, Texas.[7][1] They were raised in Denton by working class, Muslim parents who lived in near-isolation because of the threat of deportation.[8] Their parents emigrated from Bangalore, India to the United States before they were born.[6]
Khan is a conceptual artist who uses a variety of mediums to "visualize patterns and repetitions of exile and kinship shaped by economic, social, and political changes in local and global environments, with special interests in decolonization processes".[11]
Khan's first solo exhibition in New York was at the Participant Inc gallery space in 2017.[12] The exhibition, titled "iamuslima", was named after the eponymous term that Khan had
Nike stitch on a pair of sneakers as a way of protesting Nike Inc.'s refusal to allow the words "Islam" or "Muslim" on its customizable sneaker models.[12][13]
In December 2016, Khan was listed by Artnet, the
art market website, as one of "14 Emerging Women Artists to Watch for 2017".[14]
In 2018, Khan was an artist in residence at
Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.[15] Other residencies and fellowships include an artist residency at
Abrons Arts Center (2016–17), an International Travel Fellowship to Jerusalem/Ramallah through
Apexart (2015) and a Process Space artist residency at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2015).[16]
Khan staged their first solo museum exhibition, "Baseera Khan: I Am an Archive," in 2021 at the
Brooklyn Museum's
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. Presented as part of the annual UOVO Prize for emerging Brooklyn-based artists, the exhibition explored themes of Muslim-American identity and the body as a place of shared history.[17]
In 2022, Khan was commissioned to create a series of sculptures based on the form of a Corinthian column – albeit one that seems to have been toppled and wrapped in handmade silk rugs from Kashmir – for
Meta’s Manhattan office complex in the historic
James A. Farley Building.[18]
In 2023, Khan was the winner of The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist, a reality TV series that aired on MTV and the Smithsonian Channel.[19] Following the series finale, Khan's final winning commission, The Liberator (2022), was installed in the
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in
Washington, D.C., from May to July 2023. The work, a mixed media figurative sculpture made from a 3D-printed model of the artist's body and plexiglass, was partly inspired by an 18th-century Buddhist statue, Naro Dakini, in the collection of the
National Museum of Asian Art.[2]
Exhibitions
2015: Walk with Me, Critical Practices Inc., New York, New York
2015: Of Gentle Birth, Brooklyn Arts Council, Brooklyn, New York
2017: Standard Forms, curated by Christian Camacho-Light, Art Galleries at The Berrie Center for Performing and Visual Arts,
Ramapo College of New Jersey, New Jersey[20]
Blacklock, Naomi (2019).
"Baseera Khan"(PDF). Conjuring Alterity: Refiguring The Witch and the Female Scream in Contemporary Art (PhD). Faculty of Creative Industries Queensland University of Technology. pp. 78–84. Retrieved 5 December 2020.