bio

biography

Baseera Khan is a New York-based visual artist interested in materials, color, and their economies. From public art installation to sculpture, painting to performance and music, Khan collages the effects of these relationships to labor and family structures, religion, and spiritual well-being. Khan has performed and exhibited at several locations in the past years sharing this diverse practice. Their public art commission for The High Line Park, NYC, "Painful Arc II, Shoulder High," was installed from 2023-24, and a permanent public art commission, "New Leaf," was installed for Help USA, Brooklyn, NY in 2025. Khan has mounted museum solo exhibitions at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington D.C. (2023), Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY (2021-22), and a solo touring exhibition at Moody Arts Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX, and the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH (2022- 23). Other recent solo exhibitions were at Simone Subal Gallery, NYC and 10 & Zero Uno in Venice, Italy (2024), also in London, U.K., at Niru Ratnam Gallery (2025).  Several recent group exhibitions are Paul Robeson Gallery at Rutgers University, NJ (2025), 12 Gates, Philadelphia, PA (2025), Patel Brown, Toronto, Canada (2025), Ruttkowski;68, NYC (2025), Jupiter Gallery, NYC (2024), North Carolina Museum of Art, NC (2024). Over the years Khan has shared work at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2021), New Orleans Museum of Art, LA (2020), Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Munich, Germany, and Jenkins Johnson Projects, Brooklyn, NY (2019), Sculpture Center, NY (2018), Aspen Museum (2017), Participant Inc. (2017). Khan's performance work has premiered at several locations including the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Art POP Montreal International Music Festival. Khan completed a 1-moth residency at Plop, London, U.K. (2024), Lux Art Residency, San Diego (2021), a 6-week performance residency at The Kitchen NYC (2020), and was an artist in residence at Pioneer Works (2018-19), Abrons Art Center (2016-17), Khan was an International Travel Fellow to Jerusalem/Ramallah through Apexart (2015) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014). Khan received the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) Michael Richards Award for Visual Art (2024), and was the Hirshhorn Museum Gala Artist Honoree for 2023 and the 50th Anniversary Honoree (2024). Khan won an Artist Prize for the MTV/Smithsonian Channel TV docu-series, called The Exhibit (2022-23). Khan is also a recipient of the UOVO Art Prize (2020), BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize, and the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), NYSCA/NYFA and Art Matters (2018). Their works are part of several public permanent collections including the Solomon R. Guggenheim, Whitney Museum of American Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Walker Art Center, MN, and the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA. Khan received an M.F.A. from Cornell University (2012) and a B.F.A. from the University of North Texas (2005).

“In my opinion, material creates identity, not the other way around. The pressure of identity is too much and too constructed, so I try not to reinstate these colonial labels in my work, instead try to emancipate them by my use of form and color, performance - I abstract identity with multiple ways of working, keeping you guessing. My life's work is dedicated to the development of my own legacy, on my own terms, with the use of architecture, fashion, painting, photography, textiles, and music, parody, sculpture, I manifest a femme native born-Muslim-American experience from the edges of visual histories.”