Naiza Khan. Photo by Malika Abbas.
The Mittal Institute is delighted to welcome the newest Distinguished Artist Fellow, Naiza Khan, for a week-long residency on Harvard’s campus this April. A visual artist with a multidisciplinary practice spanning drawing, sculpture, archival material, and film, Khan explores themes of land, body, and memory. Her work engages deeply with museum collections and the circulation of objects linked to migration across the Indian Ocean, offering a critical lens on contemporary issues. Based between London and Karachi, Khan continues to create art that bridges personal and political histories.
Ahead of her residency, we spoke with Naiza about the inspirations behind her practice and what she hopes to explore during her time at Harvard.
Mittal Institute: We’re thrilled to welcome you to campus, Naiza! When you first learned about your nomination and selection for the Distinguished Artist Fellowship, what excited you most about this opportunity?
Naiza Khan: Thank you! I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to share my work at Harvard. Archival material and documentation is a core element of my practice, so I am excited to view a number of maps from the University’s excellent cartographic collection, as well as paintings and photographs documenting weather and oceans between the late 1800s to 1940s.
I am also looking forward to meeting with the wider communities at Harvard and those involved in the Mittal Institute’s Climate Platform. The Mittal Institute has developed a very energized and exciting program of visitors who not only contribute to the area of culture and ideas but gain tremendously from the interaction with the Harvard fraternity.
Naiza Khan, Distinguished Artist Fellow Spring 2025. Photo by Bilal Ahmed Qazi.
Mittal Institute: Have you always been drawn to the arts? Can you share the story of how your journey as an artist began?
Naiza Khan: I was a bit of a nerd at school so a lot of time was spent in the art studio! I was also lucky to have some amazing professors through art college, who were not only teaching skills, but they were mentors; like an ‘ustaad’ they guided me on the ethics of being and becoming an artist.
Besides this, my mother is an accomplished artist who taught me early on the skills of looking critically and drawing. My dad’s engineering outlook and knowledge of materials, city planning and sheer hard work influenced me during my early years. Together they both instilled in me a sense of how the production of ideas and images takes time, thought and focus.
My journey towards art practice took me to Oxford, where I was at Somerville College, reading Fine Art at the Ruskin School of Art. This was a moment when things became clear and I had the time to immerse myself in work and all the things that Oxford had to offer. As an art student it was great to have access to objects, texts, images which spanned across time and space! The Bodleian Library, the Ashmolean, and Pitt Rivers Museum were some of my favorite places.
Many contemporary artists and writers were invited to our studios, including Michael Rothenstein, Mona Hatoum, Krishna Reddy, K.G. Subramanyan, and Timothy Hyman. Being in a fine art program, which was part of an academic institution, was quite radical and liberating. We got access to some of the best minds: historians, philosophers, and contemporary artists who were making critical work. So in a sense there was a plurality through the sheer number of cultural affiliations afforded to us as artists. In this milieu I found my feet, a sense of how I could imagine the world through my work.
I set up my studio in Karachi in 1991 and began to teach at the Indus Valley School of Art. I also worked with the artist community in Pakistan and across the region through the establishment of an artists’ network of workshops affiliated with the Triangle Network. This next phase of my life as an artist was very enriching and continues to inform what I am doing today.
Image, left: Work in progress 2023. NK studio; Image, right: Armour Suit for Rani of Jhansi 2017, Galvanized steel, feathers and leather, 88 x 42 x 30cm. NK studio.
Mittal Institute: Your work deeply engages with themes of land, body, and memory. How do these elements intersect in your practice, and what draws you to them as central motifs?
Naiza Khan: Over the years, I have realized we mark the land through war and conflict, and this becomes part of the history of the land and part of its memory as well. We also carry this burden on our body; in our memory. So this is a complex relationship and a powerful connection between our actions and the response we face from nature; we see it more specifically through the climate crisis.
I have been thinking more broadly about environmental justice in the Global South. I think I was always working towards this, but more recently, have found the language to locate my work in this stream of thought and in this struggle.
I have been thinking more broadly about environmental justice in the Global South. I think I was always working towards this, but more recently, have found the language to locate my work in this stream of thought and in this struggle.
One project in which these elements of land, body, and memory intersect is the ongoing project, Walking inCommon. I use mapping to create a tangible relationship to a specific place and memory. This project began with my MA research at the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, London. It was inspired by the work of the Orangi Pilot Project, and in particular Perween Rahman who was involved in a process of embodied mapping.
As an artist, I observe and translate these points and how our colonial past is entangled in all aspects of contemporary life; in current politics, contestation of land rights, or moments of constructing a vintage telescope.
Image, top left: Against the Land Itself, 2023, Watercolor on paper 57 x 37 cm. Image, bottom left: The structures do not hold, 2011, Watercolour and graphite on paper 36 x 51 cm. Image, right: Naiza Khan with armor works, Karachi beach, 2007. Photograph: Arif Mahmood. Analog film, 51 × 50 cm. © Naiza Khan.
Mittal Institute: As a multidisciplinary artist, your work spans drawing, sculpture, archival materials, and film. How do you decide which medium best serves a particular idea or narrative?
Naiza Khan: Art is a visual language, and I try to establish the connection between my idea and the image I am producing. Each medium has its own specificity, a weight and density. Each mark or interaction through that process makes a connection to something that is emotive and generative to the idea.
An oil painting and a moving image work are similar to me as both are time-based mediums, and there is an elasticity to each process. I am revisiting and crafting the image until I arrive at something that feels right. Landing on the ‘right’ spot, requires skill and precision and deep thinking. In the creative process there is a pressure and responsibility to bring the image to a place where it can be set free.
So for example, in Hundreds of Birds Killed, I started the project as a response to a weather report, ‘Storms and Cyclones in the Indian Ocean, 1939’, which I found in the Weather Observatory in Manora Island some years back. From this capsule of weather history I developed a sound piece; to bring it to life, so that audiences could access this lost document. In the Venice Biennale (2019) where the work was first shown, the sound piece floats above a series of maps and objects made in brass, welded into sculptural form.
Hundreds of Birds Killed (map of Lahore), Installation view, 58th Venice Biennale, Pavilion of Pakistan 2019. Photo credit: Riccardo Tosetto.
Going back to your question of how I select a medium to best create a powerful narrative; my intuitive response to create the sound piece was precisely that it carried an intangibility and a freedom. So the relationship of the sound piece, floating through that space, monsoon rain and wind untethered by borders – this sound was set against the grounded solidity of the maps and objects in metal.
Mittal Institute: You divide your time between London and Karachi—two distinct yet historically connected cities. How do these places shape your artistic vision and creative process?
Naiza Khan: I feel the vibe in each city is distinct. Working between two studios gives my creative process a critical distance to reflect on ideas and what connects these cities and their entangled historical past. I feel more conscious and aware of this reflective space where I need to develop my creative process. At the same time my connection to each city is unique with an unusual rhythm. This began when we moved to London in 1977 and has continued ever since. In the beginning, I did not know how to balance this relationship, but with time I have realized its potential.
As so many people growing up in the diaspora, I always had a strong connection to ‘home’. When I went ‘home’ to settle in Pakistan (1990-2015), I had a lot to catch up on, because home was not what I had expected. This was an interesting experience and a shock!
I realized I carry both cultures and sensibilities of place. For me, this is a generative space to occupy, as I can observe the legacy of colonialism in the structure of the city and the broader colonial entanglement of Britain in South Asia. This duality is a strength, personally and professionally, and an experience that many share and celebrate.
I realized I carry both cultures and sensibilities of place. For me, this is a generative space to occupy, as I can observe the legacy of colonialism in the structure of the city and the broader colonial entanglement of Britain in South Asia. This duality is a strength, personally and professionally, and an experience that many share and celebrate.
Within each studio, I work with different materials – in Karachi, my process of collaboration with artisans and craftspeople allows me to think through casting and sculpture works; in London, I feel I have a slightly quieter space to develop my ideas through painting and experiment with other forms such as film and performance. The nature of the creative communities in both cities is very different. I feel I can bridge the cultural and social issues and find ways to enable a dialogue and more collaborative projects.
Sticky Rice and Other Stories, Four-channel video installation 13 min., 10 sec. Installation view, 58th Venice Biennale, Pavilion of Pakistan 2019. Curated by Zahra Khan. Photo credit: Riccardo Tosetto.
Homage 2008, Still from film 13 mins.
Mittal Institute: Through your work, you engage with critical issues such as migration, borders, and colonial legacies. What kinds of conversations do you hope to spark with your audience?
Naiza Khan: I would like to open some questions about how visual art can inform the conversation about the environmental crisis. I am interested in how artists can play a part in issues that are critical in our time. We should acknowledge what artists bring to the table through an interdisciplinary approach. A visual practice is essentially a conceptual practice, and this approach is enabling, partly because it is speculative and opens up all kinds of possibilities.
Artists can create transversal relationships between disciplines and a generative space for multiple voices to engage – the creative imagination can offer entry points and contribute vital research to academic thought.
☆ The views represented herein are those of the interview subject and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Mittal Institute, its staff, or its Steering Committee.
