Naiza Khan

Education

• MA, Centre for Research Architecture, Goldsmiths, University of London 
• MA, University of Oxford, Somerville College
• BFA, University of Oxford, Somerville College, Ruskin School of Art

Biography

Naiza Khan is an artist and educator based between Doha, London, and Karachi. She explores ideas of embodiment, ecology, and the layered histories of place. Grounded in research and mapping, her practice moves between drawing, painting, and film, tracing the complex intersections of geography, colonial history and collective memory.

Khan trained at the Ruskin School of Art, University of Oxford and completed her MA at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London. Her recent Exhibitions include: Colomboscope, Rhythm Alliances (2026); Gwangju Biennale, soft and weak like water (2023); Sharjah Biennale, Thinking Historically in the Present (2023); Lahore Biennale, Between the Sun and the Moon (2020).  In 2019, Khan represented Pakistan at the inaugural Pavilion of Pakistan at the 58th Venice Biennale.

In 2000, Khan co-founded the Vasl Artists’ Collective, Pakistan, which is part of the international Triangle Network of workshops. Through this platform, she worked to foster artistic communities on the ground, and innovative projects in partnership with workshops in the region and beyond. Khan received the Prince Claus Award from The Netherlands (2013) for her contribution to art and culture. In 2025, Khan was awarded the Distinguished Artist Award by Mittal South Asia Institute at Harvard University. 

Khan has taught at Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and the Department of Visual Studies, Karachi University.

Research Interests

My current research interests include archives of weather history, the monsoon and its relationship to empire. I look at objects and ideas forged through mobilities of the Indian Ocean to think about the circulation and histories of migration. Also engaging with museum collections built through trade and shipwrecks.

My long-term investigation has been of Manora Island, a defense outpost facing the Arabian Sea which forms part of a small archipelago off the natural harbor of Karachi. Through this visual journey, I have been looking at ideas of the Indian Ocean as a heterogeneous assemblage of power, colonial history and collective memory.

As an artist, I see visual practice as essentially a conceptual process, creating a generative space for multiple voices to engage. I actively locate my research as a way to create transversal relationships and open up a critical dialogue between scholarly disciplines, visual practice and situated knowledge.

Conferences and Lectureships (selected)

2026

TBA 21–Academy: The Current V: Ancestral Ocean, Convening #1: Marine Intersections and Coastlines as Webs, Colombo

2025 

Critical Futures Conference. Keynote Speaker. Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi

A Drop Becoming the Ocean Lecture Series. The Aga Khan University. Karachi

Feminist Futures: Art, Activism, and South Asian Womanhood. Symposium Speaker. Kathmandu

2024   

Mapping Water: Between Paper, Memory and the Archive. Lecture and workshop. Societies and Cultures Institute. University of Exeter, UK

Water Ways: Epistemologies and Aesthetics, Doha Institute of Graduate Studies, Qatar Museums, Rubaiyat, Doha

2023  

Land and Memory, artist’s talk, NYU Abu Dhabi

Assemblage I: Body and Politics, Northumbria University, UK

Extinct: Empire, Art and Natural Histories. Symposium, The Linnean Society and the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London

2022   

Reimagining Mobilities/ Immobilities in the Indian Ocean, The Africa Institute, Sharjah

Engine of Art, Democracy and Social Justice, Vanderbilt University.

2021

Agency | Urgency: Learning from the Global South, University of California Santa Barbara

2020

In conversation with Prof. Griselda Pollack, University of Leeds

Awards (selected)

2025

Distinguished Artist Award, The Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute, Harvard University

2013

Prince Claus Award, Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development, The Netherlands.

Fine Arts Award, Tehzeeb Foundation, Pakistan

2011

Pakistan Lecture Series Award, American Institute of Pakistan Studies.

Solo Exhibitions (selected)

2024

Unruly Edges, Rossi & Rossi, Hong Kong

2019

Manora Field Notes, Pakistan Pavilion, 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia

2017

Art Basel, Hong Kong (solo booth) Rossi & Rossi

2017

Set in a moment yet still moving, Koel Gallery, Karachi

2013

Naiza Khan: Karachi Elegies, Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan

Group Exhibitions (selected)

2026

Forthcoming: Rubaiya Qatar, Unruly Waters, Doha

Mapping Otherwise | Zarina Hashmi & Naiza Khan, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia  University, New York

Tidal Paths, an[other] space, Lahore, Pakistan

Colomboscope: Rhythm Alliances, Colombo

2025

Feminist Futures: Art, Activism, and South Asian Womanhood, Taragoan Museum, Kathmandu

2024

MANZAR: Art and Architecture from Pakistan 1940s to Today, National Museum of Qatar

2023

14th Gwangju Biennale: soft and weak like water, Gwangju

Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, Sharjah Art Foundation

2022

Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular, Sharjah Art Foundation

Embodied Change: South Asian Art Across Time, Seattle Asian Art Museum

2021

Monsoonal Multiplicities, artists’ residency and multi-site project, London

2020

Between the Sun and the Moon, Lahore Biennale 02, Lahore

2019

The Sea is History, Museum of Cultural History, Oslo

2018

9th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, The Queensland Art Gallery / Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane

Selected Bibliography

2023

Kabir, Ananya and Khan, Naiza. “Near and Far sightSites Converge”, MONSOON Journal of the Indian Ocean rim. Duke Univ Press.

2022

Yaqin, Amina, and Naiza Khan. “Partition and its echoes in Karachi: The political agency of Fahmida Riaz and Perween Rahman.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature 57.
Lahore Biennale Reader 01, Ed. Iftikhar Dadi, Published by Skira

2021

David Elliot, Art and Trousers: Tradition and Modernity in Contemporary Asia Art, Chicago Univ. Press

Khan, Naiza. “Walking inCommon: A Model for Mobile, Situated Knowledge.” Research in Arts and Education 2021, no.2

2019

Manora Field Notes, Naiza Khan. Pavilion of Pakistan, 58th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. Mousse Publishing