Naiza Khan (b. 1968, Karachi, Pakistan) lives and works between London and Karachi.
Khan’s practice includes paintings, sculpture, wall drawings, performance and video. In her work the artist captures various experiences of living and working in Karachi, seeing the effects of natural disasters, migration, rapid urbanization and political struggle as they come to shape the city. For over a decade the artist has engaged extensively with the site of Manora, Sindh.
In her work for LB01, The Observatory, the narrator voices weather reports from the India Weather Review (1939) of storms and depressions across British India. This historical weather report takes on a different tone when mapped onto current decay and ruin of the decapitated observatory building on Manora Island; its specificity is strangely intimate. It is an example of the dichotomy between imperial mapping and everyday lived reality.
Khan trained at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford, and the Wimbledon College of Art, London. Her work has been widely exhibited internationally, including at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2016), the Colombo Art Biennale (2016) and the Shanghai Biennale (2012), as well as in exhibitions, such as Hanging Fire: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, Asia Society, New York, USA (2009); Art Decoding Violence, XV Biennale Donna, Ferrara, Italy (2012); Desperately Seeking Paradise, Art Dubai, UAE (2008); Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain (2010); and the Cairo Biennale, Cairo, Egypt (2010).