Artist Talk: Baseera Khan

Baseera Khan joined the Hirshhorn 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. This special program included 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 was on view in the museum’s lower level through July 16.

Image Credit: Photo of Baseera Khan. Courtesy of Paramount.