Baseera Khan: iamuslima
August 21 – September 21, 2017
Iamuslima featured a selection of prints, sculptures, textiles, archival material and other performative objects used by Baseera Khan to reflect her experiences growing up in a Muslim American family in Texas. Tradition, memory, religion, love, intimacy and language are elements that combine to inform her position. Inspired by notable writers such as Frantz Fanon and Jean Genet, she explores her own history through points of connection, considering what it is to be a Muslim, an artist and a femme person of color.
When examining her family history, Khan realized there were some reoccurring themes centering on her family’s emigration to America that strongly affected her youth. These ranged from feelings of anxiety associated with a sense of cultural displacement to the development of a work ethic coming from a desire for social mobility. In iamuslima, Khan meditated on her Indian-Iranian-Afghani heritage and considered the stress she experienced growing up in a Muslim American family.
Reflecting on the gendered space of a typical mosque, Khan used satire to playfully divide Moudy Gallery into male and female areas. She placed prayer rugs, blankets, a monumental hair braid and personal items against the backdrop of a climbing wall whose “rocks” are made from resin casts of her body. Screen prints suggest Khan’s experience observing the Five Pillars of Islam. Together Khan’s objects and arrangements presented in iamuslima offered a critique contemporary social issues surrounding identity and oppression.
The presentation of iamuslima in Moudy Gallery was the second installment of the exhibition. Additional iterations have been presented at Participant INC., New York and at Colorado Springs Fine Art Center. Significantly, the Moudy Gallery installation was Khan’s first major solo exhibition in Texas and represented an honest but difficult, homecoming. As the artist described herself: "I think it's really important to show this work in Texas, now, a place that prepared me my whole life to fight for what I believe in despite popular consensus." Baseera Khan, June 2017
Installation images by Lynné Bowman Cravens
