Bio:

I am a combined media artist based in Albany, New York.  I work with video, photography and new genres to map concept and experience. I recently completed my Master of Fine Arts Degree at the University at Albany, New York, and hope to keep making exciting art for the rest of my life. Before studying art I had studied architecture at Cornell University and had worked in the field as a young designer for several years. I bring a lot of my conceptual and visual language from the world of architecture to the world of fine art. I love to curate, and I am currently a curator at Collar Works, a not-for-profit art Gallery in Troy, NY.  I love organizing and community service and have been involved in setting up interdisciplinary symposiums, and volunteer work in local community-building organizations.

I have been nurtured by Pakistan and the USA in my growth towards becoming an artist and I enjoy working  back and forth between these countries.

Artist Statement:

Part Pakistani, part American—I am in between. Though I am able to cross boundaries and inhabit both worlds, I experience the dilemma of not belonging in either place. I am interested in the emotional, gendered, and spatial disconnection between my biased perceptions of these worlds and the role I play as a mediator between them. In meetings with expatriate Pakistanis and patriotic American soldiers, and in collecting fragments of experiences from my in-between worlds I explore themes of personal and collective displacement, longing and absurdity. The juxtaposed videos of my disconnected experiences connect the asymptotic worlds that define me, and carve out uncomfortable voids in a world of strangers.