
- This event has passed.
Artist Talk: Baseera Khan
May 25, 2023 | 6:00 pm–7:00 pm

FREE
Advance Insider tickets available Friday, May 5, 12 pm EST (space is limited)
General tickets available Monday, May 8, 12 pm EST
While we strongly recommend claiming a free ticket in advance, we always save seats for walk-ups.
Questions? Email HirshhornExperience@si.edu
Hirshhorn Insiders, email HMSGdevelopment@si.edu
Join Baseera Khan for an artist talk and Q&A discussing their multi-faceted practice and to unveil the winning work of art from The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist. Khan’s exhibition, entitled The Liberator, conceptualizes surveillance and desire in a 3-D printed sculpture. Join us on this special evening to hear details from Khan about the experiences of competing on and conceiving work for The Exhibit.
Khan’s work explores the complex networks between materials and their economies and the effect these relationships elicit upon labor, family structures, religion, and spiritual well-being. The artist was the subject of a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum in 2021 and has presented work at other institutions across the country and abroad. Their work is in the public collections of the Solomon R. Guggenheim, NY; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY; the Walker Art Center, MN; and the New Orleans Museum of Art, LA.
Khan’s sculpture The Liberator points to ongoing and global struggles for justice, as well as the complicated relationships between Western museums, capital, and cultural identity. The work includes a 3-D printed acrylic bust made from a scan of the artist’s body and engages many themes present in their larger practice, including the tension between desire and belonging and between witnessing and surveillance. The Liberator was awarded the final commission in the six-episode television series The Exhibit: Finding the Next Great Artist, featured on MTV and the Smithsonian Channel, produced in collaboration with the Hirshhorn, and will remain on view in the museum’s lower level through July 16.
If you would like to request special accommodations for this program, please email hirshhornexperience@si.edu.
Image Credit: Photo of Baseera Khan. Courtesy of Paramount.