Baseera Khan

Baseera Khan: Precious Not Precious is an exhibition of new and recent work by the Brooklyn-based artist. In part a return to her roots as a painter, this series of collaged textile cushions situates Baseera Khan in the present-future of installation, performance, and new media. Pleather, Islamic prayer rugs and heirloom textiles intended to be part of a dowry reside with articles from her underwear drawer to articulate personal and collective experience as an American-Muslim queer femme contemporary artist. But Khan's method and process refuse the onslaught of representational paradigms and superficial assumptions -- what the artist has termed, a "desired manufactured identity" that manufactures fear. Like the Acoustic Sound Blankets (2017) that are part of the installation Iamuslima, Khan's Seats (2018) in the exhibition Precious Not Precious offer visitors a place to position themselves as individuals in a home of their own orientation.

Baseera Khan is the daughter of Afghani-Indians who emigrated to Texas in the early 1970s. She received her BFA from University of North Texas and MFA from Cornell University. She attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2014). Recent group exhibitions include In Practice: Another Echo, Sculpture Center, Long Island City (2018); Rituals, Aspen Art Museum (2018); Long, Winding Journeys: Contemporary Art and the Islamic Tradition, Katonah Museum of Art (2018); Love 2018: Purple Hearts, Leroy Neiman Gallery at Columbia University, New York (2018). Her solo exhibition Iamuslima (2017) produced by Participant Inc. in New York City, has since traveled to Moudy Gallery at Texas Christian University, Forth Worth (2017) and Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College (2018). Khan is currently part-time faculty at New York University and was recently appointed MFA Art Practice summer faculty at SVA (2018). She is co-curator of the next Queens International and will be an artist in residence at Pioneer Works in Fall 2018.