Nisa Khan: Undress me with your eyes...





Nisa Khan is a Derby-based artist working across video-performance, photography, sculpture, and installation. Their interdisciplinary practice unpacks Pakistani/British-Pakistani multiculturalism and diasporic exchanges using their body as a site and archive of experience. Khan cites and re-presents memories, historical references, popular culture, and cultural signifiers in translating these experiences to her viewer. In particular, they provide alternative representations of brown and marginalised bodies in addressing, subverting, and perpetuating cultural expectations of women.

Khan’s research currently investigates South-Asian dance performances known as Mujra which, pre-Britain’s colonisation of India, was considered an elite art form, and a pinnacle of Mughal art. Contemporary Mujra is enjoyed globally, however it's performers are exploited, face heavy censorship, and exist on the margins of society. For GLOAM, Khan exhibits new works that focus on the visual representation of Mujra’s female dancers (Tawaif), following study of Indian miniatures and Indian/Pakistani/Punjabi craft heritage dolls.

Khan is the recipient of the Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2021 award. As part of this, her work Have you been sat there plucking your fanny hair? was shown at Firstsite and South London Gallery. They hold an MA in Fine Art from Chelsea College of Arts, where their work The Browns Head Out of Town was shown at Tate Britain’s ‘Late at Tate’ (2020). Khan's from rags, to bitches to riches was shown as part of Saatchi Gallery’s London Grads Now. 21 exhibition.

Curated by Thomas Lee Griffiths

Private View: January 19th 6–9pm. 
Open: January 21–02 on Saturdays 12–4pm, or by appointment



Supported with a National Lottery Project Grant, distributed by Arts Council England and Sheffield City Council.