I Am an Archive: Baseera Khan

I Am an Archive: Baseera Khan

I Am an Archive is Artist Baseera Khan’s solo debut museum exhibition. On view for nine months at the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum, New York, the exhibit was held in concurrence with the artist’s receipt of the UOVO Prize. The UOVO prize for emerging artists offers the recipient a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a commission for a 50×50-foot art installation on the façade of UOVO’s Brooklynsite, and a $25,000 unrestricted cash grant.

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Baseera Khan, Privacy Control, Mixed media, 2018-20, Simone Subal Gallery, New York

Khan’s ambit of expression is prismatic — unfettered by a particular medium. It encompasses performance, sculpture, installation, collage, textile; the list goes on. Their work for the show is primarily seeded in themes that revolve around surveillance, cultural exploitation, disposition tied to colonial narratives, and the intricacies that are inevitably interwoven in an immigrant’s identity. Much of their work “contextualises” this protean silhouette – where India, East Africa, Afghanistan, Kashmir and the US meet.

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Baseera Khan, Column 6, Mixed media, 2019, Simone Subal Gallery, New York
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Baseera Khan, Braidrage, Mixed media, 2017– ongoing, Simone Subal Gallery, New York

In 2007, the artist relocated to New York from Texas, where they continue to live and work today. Khan has always been a visual communicator, predominantly moved by music. Initially resisting their intrinsic flow of performance art, the artist remained seated in a quiet practice of painting, photography and drawing. Soon after experiencing some artistic epiphanies, they transitioned to a more expansive practice. After nine months at the Brooklyn Museum, Khan reflects on the experience, and birth of the multifaceted body of work that is I Am an Archive.

Carmen Hermo, Associate Curator of the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum was the curator for this show. Hermo and Khan worked closely for a year, ideating and conceptualising themes that emerged from the artist’s practice while also internalising the news and disarray of the world.

Khan created four new commissioned works — an album, 3-D printed figures, chandeliers, and a collage series from the antiquity collections of the Brooklyn Museum. 

The artist says, “Overall, I was trying to discuss how surveillance and desire are closely linked; how we play out these roles on our own bodies, in architecture, in historical objects, and lastly in our endurance and emotional labour.”

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Baseera Khan, Jingle Johnny Processional Stand Pink (Law of Antiquities), Mixed media, 2021, Simone Subal Gallery, New York
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Baseera Khan, Mosque Lamp and Prayer Carpet Green (Law of Antiquities), Mixed media, 2021, Simone Subal Gallery, New York

The artist guides us through a period of transition that transformed their work into what it is today. While Khan’s themes are continually informed by identity, their approach to their practice has evolved into one that is more comprehensive of the ideas they want to pursue. 

“I was not receiving enough energy or even control of the narrative. However, when I painted or did drawings, it was always alternative, or something performative, so instead of denying myself of this work, I started to dabble in the idea of performance art”, says the artist.

The intrinsic core of Khan’s work is their “identity,” or more precisely, the deconstruction of it. For I Am an Archive, the artist attempts to break identity-based visualisation and complicate narratives. “I view material and capitalism as the identity fabricators, and so I like to look at the material and unpack it when thinking about my purported identity in this sense. Economies create a difference, and therefore, people create identities to control their environment against the background of a global economy”. Khan exposes how resources are not apolitical but the very catalysts of global change.

Baseera Khan at The Wexner Center for the Arts. Photo by Stephen Takacs.
Baseera Khan, I Arrive in a Place with a High Level of Psychic Distress, Blue, Chromogenic photograph and laser-cut acrylic, 2021, Simone Subal Gallery, New York
Baseera Khan, I Arrive in a Place with  a High Level of Psychic Distress, Orange, Chromogenic photograph and laser-cut acrylic, 2021, Simone Subal Gallery, New York
Baseera Khan, I Arrive in a Place with a High Level of Psychic Distress, Orange, Chromogenic photograph and laser-cut acrylic, 2021, Simone Subal Gallery, New York

It all began in October 2020, in conjunction with the pandemic calendar – one that threw the world off its rhythm. Hermo elaborates on the experience, “Baseera and I spent a lot of time connecting and unwinding on zoom. We, of course, discussed the production of artwork, marketing, programs, and all the many aspects of an exhibition’s life, but we also grappled with what we were seeing in the world in all its chaos and imbalance, and how museums and institutions fit into it. Baseera poignantly addressed how their life— their experiences, their background, their upbringing, everything— is just as valid an ‘archive’, a ‘fact’, as anything kept in a museum, or historical archive, or state archive. This idea kept coming up for me as the strain that united a lot of Baseera’s work— on the one hand, collecting and so beautifully rendering those experiences into heart-wrenching or reflective work; but on the other, encapsulating the ongoing changes in how we perceive authority, and understand who writes history.”

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Baseera Khan, Installation view, 2019, Simone Subal Gallery, New York,

Khan’s work for the show morphed into a display of counter-archive compositions tied to identity uncovering the materiality of objects, bodies and even hair as both the medium and subject. The materials in I Am an Archive highlight how capitalism and colonialism shape markets and international politics, perpetuating oppressive cycles that the average consumer may not be aware of. The exhibition presented a thought-provoking collection of pieces that call into question the basic foundation on which we stand.

Text by Shreya Ajmani

Image Courtesy: Simone Subal Gallery

Find out more about the exhibition and the artist:

https://simonesubal.com/artists/baseera-khan 

https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/baseera_khan 

https://baseerakhan.com/snakeskin 

https://baseerakhan.com/privacy-control 

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