Sara Khan

Statement

I scrutinize the repulsion and beauty found in ordinary spaces and situations, and question the normalcy of the seemingly mundane matters in life. For example; how a man inside a woman leads to the birth of another human; turning the woman into a mound of soil in which a human germinates like a plant from a seed, and in the process disfigures the woman to the limits of possibility.

It is in dealing with these observations that I draw them out, to find a place for things that are neither here nor there. Slowly laying out translucent layers of watercolour, I work toward pronouncing some areas, while covering others entirely, almost decoratively as if to say “you didn’t belong, but now you do, or you did belong and now you don’t.” I leave some questions to chance, answer others more definitively, hovering somewhere between restraint and complete spontaneity. The idea is to develop a space or landscape with both extremes in it; the abhorrent and the fantastic. Coexisting to form one complete picture; thriving in the gray areas, its a subtle dance between “is it” and “is it not”.

About

Khan was born in Birmingham, England in 1984 and raised in Lahore, Pakistan. She holds a BFA (with honours) from National College of Arts, Lahore (2008). She was 1 of 13 international artists selected for the Bag Art camp, an international art residency in Bergen, Norway (2012). She was also 1 of 23 artists selected for the Vancouver Mural Festival (2018).

Her works have been featured in several national and international group exhibitions. In addition to her first solo show “Suraj Kinare” in Canada at the Surrey Art Gallery in 2019, recent group shows include “Terrestrial Beings”, Esplanade Arts and Heritage Centre, Medicine Hat, Canada in 2019, and “What is Seen and Not Seen, With or Without Seeing”, Gandhara Art Space, Karachi, Pakistan in 2017. Her work has also been featured in the book “A Big Important Artist: A Womanual” by Danielle Kryza.

She lives and works in Vancouver, Canada