Second Skin, Column 2 (2022) by Baseera Khan.
Photo: SEAN FLEMING
Next Big Thing: Baseera Khan
With a practice that includes photographs, installations, collages, drawings, and performance art, the American artist challenges the viewer to confront hot-button issues
Baseera Khan. Photo: ANNIE POWERS
With a practice that includes photographs, installations, collages, drawings, and performance art that borders on an endurance sport, Baseera Khan presents a powerful oeuvre that challenges the viewer to confront topics such as xenophobia, spirituality, and invisible labor. As Khan is a first-generation American whose family comes from Indo-Iranian and East African descent, gender and identity play a large role in her work.
The Protector (2023), from the “Bust of Canons” series. Photo: DANIEL TERNA
On view: To create Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High), a monumental granite archway made of inscribed tablets, installed on New York’s High Line through May 2024, Khan interviewed numerous High Line staff members and photographed the influx of shipping boxes delivered to the site every day. In doing so, Khan turns a public monument into a celebration of the unseen domestic labor that goes into maintaining civic spaces.
Painful Arc II (Shoulder-High) II Photo: Courtesy of the artist
Up next: A solo show in March 2024 at Simone Subal Gallery in New York featuring new oil paintings inspired by woodcut sculptures made in Kashmir, as well as “From Alpha to Creation: Religion in the Deep South,” a group show at the North Carolina Museum of Art.
“Baseera’s work, like Baseera, is fearless, constantly challenging and complicating identity as well as the imperfect world that forges it”
JiaJia Fei
Second Skin, Column 2 (2022) by Baseera Khan. Photo: SEAN FLEMING
A version of this article first appeared in print in our 2023 Winter Issue under the headline “Next Big Things.” Subscribe to the magazine.
Click here to see the full list of “Next Big Things.”
Cover: Second Skin, Column 2 (2022) by Baseera Khan.
Photo: SEAN FLEMING
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