Baseera Khan | |
|---|---|
 Khan in 2023 | |
| Born | Baseera Khan 1980 Denton, Texas, US |
| Education | University of North Texas Cornell University |
| Known for | Installation art Mixed media |
| Awards | The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist (2023) |
Baseera Khan (born 1980) is an American visual artist who uses material, form, and color to express non-verbal concepts in sculpture, installation, painting, performance, and photography.
Khan uses they/them pronouns.[1][2][3] Their work discusses the political circumstances of their identity as a queer Muslim and "as a feminist, and as a brown Indian-Afghani".[4] They are based in New York City.
Khan was born in 1980 in Denton, Texas.[5][6] They were raised in Denton by working class, Muslim parents who lived in near-isolation because of the threat of deportation.[7] Their parents emigrated from Bangalore, India to the United States before they were born.[4]
They received a B.F.A. in drawing/painting and sociology from the University of North Texas in 2005, and an M.F.A. from the Cornell University College of Architecture, Art and Planning in 2012.[8] In 2014, they completed the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture program.[9]
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".[10]
In December 2016, Khan was listed by Artnet, the art market website, as one of "14 Emerging Women Artists to Watch for 2017".[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 2018, Khan was an artist in residence at Pioneer Works in Red Hook, Brooklyn.[14] 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).[15]
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.[16]
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.[17]
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.[18] 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.[19]