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. "Painful Arc II, Shoulder High," a public art commission for High Line Art, NYC, was installed from 2023-24, and "New Leaf," a permanent public art commission for Help USA, Brooklyn, NY was installed in 2025. Khan has had several solo institutional exhibitions such as Mass Art Museum, Boston, Massachusetts (2026), the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington D.C. (2023), Brooklyn Museum, NY (2021-22), and a solo touring exhibition at Moody Arts Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, TX, and Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, OH (2022-23). Khan mounted recent international solo exhibitions at Niru Ratnam Gallery, London, U.K. (2025) and 10 & Zero Uno in Venice, Italy (2024) . Several recent group exhibitions are the Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2026), Sargent’s Daughters, NYC (2026), Paul Robeson Gallery at Rutgers University, NJ (2025), 12 Gates, Philadelphia, PA (2025), Patel Brown, Toronto, Canada (2025), Ruttkowski;68, NYC (2025), 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), Simone Subal Gallery, NYC (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), Wexner Center Film/Video Studio Residency (2020), 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, “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 to unmap gender, economies, and colonial ideologies in my work. By my use of form and color, I try to emancipate objects, images, and performance from their inherited representational responsibilities - 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, music, parody, and sculpture, I manifest a femme native born-Muslim-American experience from the edges of visual histories.”