Baseera Khan: Weight on History

Baseera Khan shifts seamlessly between media to explore the interconnectedness of capital, politics, and the body. Their work in video, photography, sculpture, and performance creates spaces of reprieve, beauty, and safety, while also critiquing power structures and knowledge systems that systematically exclude or misrepresent marginalized populations. For their first solo exhibition in the Midwest, Khan brings together new and recent collages, sculptures, and video, alongside a major new commission that responds to architectural signifiers of power. 

Monumental in scale, Painful Arc (Shoulder-High) (2022), features a classical Islamic arch clad with custom pictographic paneling inscribed with loaded cultural symbols such as the microphone, crescent moon, and triangle. The new work expands upon the artist’s interest in juxtaposing kitsch, pop-culture iconography, with those associated with value, power, and authority. In doing so, the installation raises questions about equity, access, and the need to build new monuments for a more inclusive future. 

The accompanying works delve into the ways in which daily life as a femme Muslim person can be a radically political act. Overall, Khan’s personal navigation between the present and the past speaks to the marginalization of Islamic culture in the United States, as well as to the complexity of understanding seemingly disparate states of assimilation and displacement. The exhibition invites visitors to consider what it would mean to rewrite history from the perspective of the periphery.

The exhibition is co-organized with the Moody Center for the Arts at Rice University, where it was on view in the summer of 2022.