Each year Pratt Fine Arts invites contemporary artists for a public lecture and to conduct studio visits with fine arts graduate students. This Visiting Artists Lecture Series (VALS) is coordinated by graduate student leaders. The aim is to provide our students with exposure to a wide array of artists working in a variety of fields at various stages in their careers. Recent and past visiting artists include: Abigail D. Deville, Edgar Heap of Birds, Jennie Jieun Lee, Shazia Sikander, Elektra KB, Nina Katchadourian, Wardell Milan, Wendy Red Star, Narcissister, Pradeep Dalal, James Hyde, Jill Magid, Schezerade Garcia, Rochelle Feinstein, Lavar Munroe, Lorna Simpson, Rico Gatson, Nicole Eisenman, Tom Sachs, Aura Satz, Leigh Ledare, Judith Bernstein, Dan Walsh, Kalup Linzey, Keltie Ferris, LaToya Ruby Frazier, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Diana Al-Hadid, Rashaad Newsome, Dora + Maja, Bryan Zanisnik, Nancy Grossman, Peter Saul, Michael Berryhill, Wafaa Bilal, and Catherine Opie.

Pratt’s Fine Arts Department Visiting Artists Lecture Series was made possible by a generous grant from the Robert Lehman Foundation.

About the Artist

Baseera Khan is a New York-based visual artist who sublimates colonial histories through performance and sculpture in order to map geographies of the future. Baseera collages distinct and often mutually exclusive cultural references to explore the conditions of alienation, displacement, assimilation, and fluidity. Against the backdrop of a crestfallen edge, their work also gestures toward humorous pop cultural references. Using visual legacies of body identities, rituals, and spiritualities, Khan also attempts to reveal volatile subjectivities, especially within capitalist-driven social environments such as the United States. Making layers in their work that fit beside, on top, in between, and underneath creates numerous projects that evoke a sense of living under surveillance, in suspension, between exile and kinship. Khan generates installations of concealment, momentary reflections, and sanctuaries. Their life’s work is dedicated to the development of their own legacy, on their own terms, with the use of fashion, photography, textiles and music, parody, sculpture, and performance, they manifest their femme native-born Muslim American experience.

(Pictured)Painful Arc (Shoulder-High), 2022

Plywood, high-density urethane foam, and LED lights

Commissioned by the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

Painful Arc (Shoulder-High) expands upon the artist’s interest in interrogating architectural archetypes and the authority they represent. Central to Islamic architecture, while also serving as entryways and meeting places in American cities and towns, archways act as gateways to a wide range of structures, including religious sites and memorials. Using commonplace materials, including plywood and high-density foam, Khan renders a traditional arch clad with panels incised with patterns sourced from illustrated Islamic manuscripts and self-portraiture. On the upper half of the structure, two silhouettes of the artist’s body mirror each other, as if climbing the façade of the arch. Recurrent symbols from the artist’s practice such as the triangle, the crescent moon, and the microphone suggest a sense of weightlessness, freeing the work from a predetermined history and inscribing it with the artist’s own experience. The installation encourages viewers to rethink colonial powers and their historic influence while raising questions about equity, access, and the need to build new monuments for a more inclusive future.

Image Credit: Painful Arc (Shoulder-High), 2022 Plywood, high-density urethane foam, and LED lights Commissioned by the Moody Center for the Arts, Rice University, Houston, and the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati

Bio Image: Courtesy of the Artist.

Time: 6:00 PM EST

Free!

Registration