Mapping Water (2023) 4K video, color, sound, 20 minutes
Exhibition history:
Mapping Otherwise | Zarina Hashmi & Naiza Khan, Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York City, USA, 2026 Rubaiya Qatar, Unruly Waters, Doha, Qatar, 2026 Sharjah Biennale 15: Thinking Historically in the Present, 2023 Curated by Hoor Al Qasimi
Henna Hands and its Afterlives (2022) single channel video, color, sound, 20 minutes
Exhibition history:
Pop South Asia, Sharjah Art Foundation and Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2022-2023 Curated by Iftikhar Dadi and Roobina Karode
Sticky Rice and other Stories, part I (2019)
single channel video, color, sound, 13 minutes 10 seconds
Sticky Rice and Other Stories is a filmic installation in two parts. It traces a mental map of the region around Karachi, from colonial textile trade to containerised cargo shipping. The disorienting effect of this geography mirrors the impact of globalisation on Karachi’s own locality, which is obscured by the movement of goods from one place to another at ever lower cost and with ever less friction.
The viewer encounters two interwoven narratives: one screen captures an interview or interaction Khan has, while the other shows the island unfolding simultaneously. One of the films features her discussion with several artisans about creating models of various historical boats from the region. The other features an interview with a man who makes telescopes from old binoculars. Both are accompanied by shots of the harbour, the beach, and a man slowly pushing a cart full of model boats along the shorefront, the wheels carving lines into the sand.
The Observatory (2012) single channel video, color, sound, 6 minutes 22 seconds
Playing in a continuous loop, Observatory examines a derelict observatory on Manora and interleaves images of decaying architecture with a reading of weather reports from 1939, discovered in the building. In her deft re-awakening of a lost past, Khan brings the deteriorating present of the Observatory into an elegiac focus.
Homage (2010) single channel video, color, sound, 10 minutes 10 seconds
In Homage, Khan focuses on a pile of broken and discarded school furniture in the middle of a desolate, rubble-strewn site. The artist intervenes by painting the furniture in a sky-blue colour, the exact colour of painted gravestones nearby where the children, who died from the collapse of the school wall, are buried. She is assisted in her labour by local residents, and one also hears the voices of onlookers who describe their everyday concerns with droll and resigned pathos. The video grapples with the question of everyday marginalization, displacement, and disenfranchisement as alluded to in these unscripted parallel conversations.