The Brooklyn Museum Awards Second Annual UOVO Prize to Baseera Khan
| Brooklyn-based artist to receive a solo exhibition, public installation, and $25,000 cash award |
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| The Brooklyn Museum is pleased to award Baseera Khan the second annual UOVO Prize, which recognizes the work of emerging Brooklyn-based artists. Khan’s work concentrates on performance, Islamic cultural and religious ephemera, sculpture, collage, and video, and addresses issues of surveillance, otherness, and the body. As the awardee, Khan will receive a solo exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, a commission for a 50×50-foot public art installation on the façade of UOVO: BROOKLYN, located in Bushwick, and a $25,000 unrestricted cash grant. Their public installation and Museum exhibition will debut in fall of 2021. Khan was selected by a team of curators from the Brooklyn Museum, and the exhibition, the artist’s first solo museum show, will be curated by Carmen Hermo, Associate Curator, Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art.
“Baseera Khan’s proposal for the Brooklyn Museum thrilled the curators with its poignant synthesis of historical and contemporary references,” says Hermo. “Their deep sense of care for their communities, razor-sharp critical foundations, and rich sense of humor imbue their work with both power and play, and will challenge and delight visitors to the Museum in 2021.”
Khan, who grew up in Denton, Texas, and has lived in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the past ten years, uses their work to call out the social architectures of othering, exploitation of cultures and resources, and xenophobia within our public and private spaces. Khan’s practice often incorporates collage techniques, their own body, and myriad references to historical and contemporary Muslim culture and politics, revealing the oppressions of patriarchy. Approaching the challenges of assimilation and belonging as they relate to a variety of experiences, from self-fashioning to spirituality, Khan harnesses history, humor, and a sense of catharsis in their materially resonant work.
“I remember moving to Brooklyn in 2007, quite close to the Brooklyn Museum in fact, and I’ve lived close by ever since,” says Khan. “I am deeply moved that my first museum solo exhibition will happen in a space that provided me and others with so much comfort during the lockdown of COVID-19. Past the visions of cherry blossoms and botanic desires, the Museum has such a vast collection and scholarship around Islamic art as well as work by Black and Brown artists. The work I will present could not be in a better location.”
Steve Guttman, UOVO Founder and Chairman, remarks: “We are excited by the selection of Baseera Khan as the second recipient of the UOVO Prize in conjunction with the Brooklyn Museum. We look forward to celebrating this achievement and showcasing their thought-provoking composition at UOVO: BROOKLYN in 2021.”
The inaugural UOVO Prize winner was announced in June 2019. John Edmonds, whose installation for UOVO: BROOKLYN is on view through next year, is also the focus of a solo exhibition, John Edmonds: A Sidelong Glance, at the Brooklyn Museum and on view through August 8, 2021. |
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| Image Credit: Baseera Khan. (Photo: Maridelis Morales Rosado) |
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About the artist
Baseera Khan was born in Denton, Texas, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Upcoming solo exhibitions include Public Art Fund, New York (2021, forthcoming), and Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, Georgia (2021, forthcoming). Selected solo and twoperson exhibitions include The Kitchen, New York (2020); Simone Subal Gallery, New York (2019); Jenkins Johnson, New York (2019); Colorado Springs Fine Art Centers, Colorado (2018); Texas Christian University College of Fine Arts, Fort Worth, Texas (2017); and Participant Inc. Gallery, New York (2017). Selected group exhibitions include Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, Ohio (2021, forthcoming); NOMA, New Orleans, Louisiana (2020); Gracie Mansion Conservancy, New York (2020); LACE, Los Angeles, California (2020); Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, Munich, Germany (2019); BRIC, New York (2019); Albany Museum, Albany, New York (2019); Ford Foundation Gallery, New York (2019); Helena Anrather, New York (2019); St. John the Divine Church, New York (2019); Simone Subal Gallery, New York (2018); MoCA Tucson, Arizona (2018); Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, New York (2018); 47 Canal, New York (2018); Paul Kasmin Gallery, New York (2018); Smack Mellon, New York (2018); The Kitchen, New York (2018); Kate Werble Gallery, New York (2018); Sculpture Center, New York (2018); Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, Colorado (2018); Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2017); Queens Museum, New York (2016); Socrates Sculpture Park, New York (2016); and Abrons Art Center, New York (2016). Khan has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including the BRIC Colene Brown Art Prize (2019), Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2019), and Art Matters (2018). Artist residencies include LUX Art Institute, Encinitas, California (2021, forthcoming); Pioneer Works, New York (2018); AIRspace, Abrons Art Center, New York (2016); and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture Program, Maine (2014). Khan’s work is part of the following public collections: Kadist, Paris and San Francisco; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; and Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
About the Brooklyn Museum
Founded in 1823 as the Brooklyn Apprentices’ Library Association, the Brooklyn Museum contains one of the nation’s most comprehensive and wide-ranging collections, enhanced by a distinguished record of exhibitions, scholarship, and service to the public. The Museum’s vast holdings span 5,000 years of human creativity from cultures in every corner of the globe. Collection highlights include the ancient Egyptian holdings, renowned for objects of the highest quality, and the American collections, which are unrivaled in their diversity, from Native American art and artifacts and Spanish colonial painting, to nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American painting, sculpture, and decorative objects. The Museum is also home to the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, which is dedicated to the study and exhibition of feminist art and is the only curatorial center of its kind. The Brooklyn Museum is both a leading cultural institution and a community museum dedicated to serving a wide-ranging audience. Located in the heart of Brooklyn, the Museum welcomes and celebrates the diversity of its home borough and city. Few, if any, museums in the country attract an audience as varied with respect to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, educational background, and age as the audience of the Brooklyn Museum.
About UOVO
UOVO is New York’s number one provider of art, fashion, and collections storage and services. With more than 650,000 square feet of storage across four New York locations, UOVO provides an array of storage options and innovative service and management solutions tailored to meet the specialized needs of any collection including climate controlled storage, private viewing rooms, transportation, packing, and installation services. Driven by a mission to preserve our collective cultural legacy through a new standard of stewardship, the company has worked with thousands of clients worldwide including the world’s most recognizable artists, architects, entertainers, fashion designers, galleries, libraries, museums, and private collectors as well as charitable trusts, corporate collections, estates, government agencies, and nonprofits. Each UOVO facility is purpose-designed and managed by a team of industry-leading experts dedicated to ensuring that works are safeguarded with the highest caliber of security, discretion, professionalism, and care.
