> info
for more information
contact Zehra at:
zehra @ zehrakhan.comCurrently based in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
> news
2010 January 29 - May 9:
The Sketchbook Project, Traveling exhibition - Atlanta, Brooklyn, Los Angeles, Saint Louis, Chicago. Opening Feb 26 in Brooklyn.
2010 January 16 - March 27:
Nude 2010, Lexington Art League, Lexington, KY. Jurors Boris Zakic and Esther Randall.
2010 January 5 - Feb 31:
Solo exhibition, Les Animaux, The French Library Alliance Française, 53 Marlborough Street, Boston, MA.
Fight or Make Up currently on view at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in the Graduate and Continuing Education office.
Solo exhibition, Ocean Winds, Follen Unitarian Universalist Church, 755 Massachusettes Ave, Lexington, MA.
2009
Photograph of artist and work in ArtScope Magazine, Nov/Dec 2009 Issue, page 58.
Riders on the Train, AXIOM Gallery, Boston, MA. Curated by Nance Davies. Photographs of the opening and artist talk in Big Red & Shiny.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design at the Fine Arts Work Center MFA Thesis Exhibition, Provincetown Arts Association and Museum, Provincetown, MA. Curated by Jim Peters.
Massachusetts College of Art and Design at the Fine Arts Work Center MFA Thesis Exhibition, Gallery Ehva, Provincetown, MA. Curated by Jim Peters.
Completed Masters of Fine Arts, at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, low-residency painting program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (MFAWC). September and May were spent in residency in Provincetown, MA. Faculty include Jim Peters, Helen Miranda Wilson, and Joel Janowitz, and mentors have included Ambreen Butt, James Cambronne and Jason Glasser.
LEIER and KHAN. Brookline Library, Brookline, MA. Joint exhibition with Michelle Leier.
2008
Solo exhibit, Memory of a Landscape. The Piper Gallery- Cary Memorial Library, Lexington, MA.
A winner of the competition "Why Do You Do What You Do?", photographs on display at the Burning Man arts festival, Black Rock, NV.
Painting commissioned for a concert co-headlining The Doobie Brothers and Chicago at the Boston Bank of America Pavilion. Sponsored through Rock & Art, the painting is on display and will be auctioned.
Mural and altar piece completed in New Orleans in collaboration with Adam Scott Miller as part of the rebuilding efforts post-Hurricane Katrina. The mural is at 2517 Jackson Ave, and the altar piece at 2309 Dryades Street.
Six paintings featured in Fringe Magazine, Issue 14.
2007
Solo exhibit, Bang. Follen Unitarian Universalist Church, Lexington, MA.
Solo exhibit, Cityscapes. The Piper Gallery - Cary Memorial Library, Lexington, MA.
Featured in the curator's October portfolio on ArtBistro, an artist's website.
2006
Artist write-up featured in India New England.
Recipient of 2006 Valence Award for "Raising the Bar" in Visual Arts. Outlet Zine, Lowell, MA.
Art exhibited and for sale at Zenaini Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan.
Lived in Karachi, Pakistan teaching art and film courses at several institutions including the Pakistani Air Force - Karachi Institute of Economics and Technology.
> artist statement
I draw animals. Posing with their mouths open wide in a moment often indistinguishable between playing and fighting, they speak for the human relationships we spontaneously make, redefine, and emotionally invest ourselves in. Lately these animals have found themselves crawling off the page and onto humans; I paint them on friends' or my own body, then I photograph them.
I work intuitively. I believe in spontaneity and surprises. While working on skin I am influenced by the nuances of each body and the interaction between myself and my volunteer "canvas." It is a relational art. The drawing is an ephemeral experience that cannot be possessed in its impermanence. There may be photographic documentation but the essence of the experience is between the person I am drawing on, whoever else is present, and myself.
My wanderlust provides me with more to examine. How someone greets me in Boston is different than in Paris. The animals I draw are analogues to these human moments - some are too serious to be addressed seriously, some are tiny moments I lampoon or canonize. Mostly I am interested in the bud of love and relationships. The drawn animals ripple across skin, captured in intimacy. They are looking for their others.
ON THE INSTALLATION WORK:
To initiate a more social and collaborative art practice, I create installations which include my friends. When I paint on their skin, my volunteers are transformed into animals. The final product of this act is a photograph or film in which the viewer glimpses the surreal high jinks of a human disguised as a giant rat.
By painting on bodies, I participate in acts of intimacy which are themselves performances of social engagement. My painted friends become animal characters activating their environment, fictions which lay bare the very real hazards of human relationships. In the vulnerable experience of searching for love and companionship, many of my creatures rely on alcohol, or they become social smokers. With these blunders come anger, excessive indulgence, bliss and bitterness, which dramatize the complex motives of people who are trying to attract a mate. Understanding their behavior, and relating to it, is the primary inspiration for my artwork.
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