Sara Raza by Asya Gorovits
Sara Raza is an award-winning contemporary art curator and writer based in New York City. She is the author of “Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion,“ published by Black Dog Press in London in 2022. Currently based in New York Sara runs her independent curatorial studio practice specializing in global curatorial knowledge and 21st-century museum collecting practices, as well as having professional interests in architectural art history, performance-based practices, and the intersection of art, ancient thinking sciences, and emergent technologies. She is a curator and consultant for Mathaf Modern Art Museum, in Doha and a Red Burns Fellow awarded by New York University’s Tisch School of the Art’s Interactive Telecommunications Program for distinguished researchers and scholars. She teaches courses on the Master’s program specializing in critical thought from a post-colonial and post-Soviet perspective and is an adjunct faculty member in Media, Cultures, and Communications at NYU Steinhart, where she teaches undergraduate courses. She is also a faculty member at the School of Visual Arts for the MA Curatorial Studies Program.
A recognized cultural thought leader Sara has received several awards and honors for her work, including the ArtTable New Leadership Award for Women in the Arts and the Arts Council of England’s Curatorial Award. She was a finalist for the Walther Hopps Curatorial Award and has been honored as one of 40 influential global arts thinkers (Deutsche Bank/Apollo), leading visual cultural expert on post-Soviet Central Asia and the Caucasus (Culture Trip), numerously profiled as leading curators from the Middle East and North Africa and one of 25 international female curators (Artnet).
Sara, born in London, UK, is British and of Persian and Central Asian Turkic heritage. She belongs to a historical intellectual family that includes academics, archaeologists, economists, engineers, law makers/military strategists (anti-imperial) and patrons (Islamic architecture/historical preservation) which has greatly impacted her work and academic transcultural research interests. She has lived and traveled extensively since early childhood in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, gaining a profound early education. She earned her MA in 20th Century Art History, Theory, and Philosophy from Goldsmiths College, University of London, in 2003, and received a BA (honors) in English Literature and History of Art, also from Goldsmiths College, in 2001. She pursued studies towards her practice-based MPhil–PhD Curating degree at the Royal College of Art, London, where her research focused on Post-Soviet Orientalism under the supervision of film and moving image theorist Professor Mark Nash from 2012 to 2014. Currently, she is completing her PhD degree under the supervision of feminist art historian Professor Katy Deepwell at the University of Middlesex in London. She sits on the scientific committee for the San Diego Museum of Art’s 2024 exhibition “Wonders of Creation: Art, Science, and Innovation in the Islamic World.” In 2021, she was selected to design and direct the first Masters in Museum Studies in Central Asia by the Art and Culture Development Foundation, under the Ministry of Culture of Uzbekistan. Previously, she was a member of the International Center of Photography (ICP) global advisory council (2020-22), SAHA Curatorial Research Resident in Istanbul, Turkey (2018), and a Fellow of the International Curator’s Forum, (ICF) UK (2017-18) for curators and scholars from the UK. Additionally, she is a regular guest critic for MA programs’ thesis panels at MIT, Parsons, RISD, and Yale.
Sara has curated over 3 dozen exhibitions comprised of international projects for biennials, festivals, galleries, and museums. In 2023, she collaborated with the Maison Européenne de la Photographie (MEP) and the International Center of Photography to organize the New York presentation of “Love Songs: Photography and Intimacy,” which included works by Nobuyoshi Araki, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Motoyuki Daifu, Fouad Elkoury, Aikaterini Gegisian, Nan Goldin, Sheree Hovsepian, Clifford Prince King, Sally Mann, RongRong&inri, Collier Schorr, Karla Hiraldo Voleau and others. In 2022 she curated “The Sun Rises in the West and Sets in the East” at Tufts University Museum Art Galleries featuring Lida Abdul, Kader Attia, Yael Bartana, Emily Jacir, Nadia Kaabi-Linke and others and in 2019, she was selected as the first contemporary art guest curator for the Rubin Museum of Art’s Year of Power. There she organized the group exhibition “Clapping with Stones: Art and Acts of Resistance,” which included the works of Lida Abdul, Kimsooja, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Nari Ward, Hank Willis Thomas, Shahpour Pouyan, Pallavi Paul, and others. In 2018, she curated the thematic posthumous solo show of the leading Syrian artist Fateh Al Moudarres, titled “Color, Extensity, and Sense,” for Mathaf Modern Arab Art Museum in Doha, Qatar. Additionally, she oversaw the multi-chapter exhibition project “Punk Orientalism” at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. This project featured works by Babi Badalov, Ali Cherri, Inci Eviner, Aikaterini Gegisian, Rokni Haerizadeh, Taus Makhacheva, Slavs and Tatars, and others. From 2015 to 2018, Sara was the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator, Middle East, and North Africa, leading the third and final phase of the multi-year Guggenheim UBS MAP Global Art Initiative. This initiative culminated in the critically acclaimed exhibition “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa,” which debuted in New York in 2016 and traveled to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Milan in 2018. The two exhibitions featured 28 art objects Sara acquired for the Guggenheim’s US Collection. In 2019, she founded the global visual cultures curatorial studio Punk Orientalism, through which she works on exhibitions, education projects, and publications in Central Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, creating an important cultural bridge with the US. Prior to joining the Guggenheim, she organized exhibitions at the Maraya Art Centre in Sharjah, UAE, where she served as a curator from 2011 to 2014. During her tenure, she commissioned and curated solo exhibitions by Adel Abidin, Wafaa Bilal, and Mohamed Kazem. Sara also curated the 3rd Baku Public Art Festival “A Drop of Sky” (2015), “Rhizoma: Saudi Arabia’s Generation in Waiting” at the 55th Venice Biennale (2013), Ergin Cavusoglu’s Middle Eastern debut exhibition at The Pavilion Downtown Dubai (2011), the Central Asian Salon for the 6th Tashkent Biennial Uzbekistan (2011), Shezad Dawood’s first North American solo exhibition at the Plug In ICA, Winnipeg (2010), “Practices of Everyday Life: New Image Making in the Middle East” featuring Reza Aramesh, Yael Bartana, and Ergin Cavusoglu, and “Cult of Personality” with Erbossyn Meldibekov and Sophia at ShContemporary, Shanghai (both 2008). She also co-curated the 2nd Bishkek International: “In the Shadow of Fallen Heroes.”
Previously, Sara served as the consultant head of education for YARAT Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan (2014-15), where she designed public programs and educational workshops for emerging artists, students and young people and curated the 3rd Baku Public Art Festival (2015). She was the consulting head of curatorial programs at Alaan Artspace, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2011-13), curator of public programs at Tate Modern, London (2006–8), and assistant curator at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (2005). She was an educational advisor to Edge of Arabia’s CULTURUNNERS US tour (2013–14) and an artist adviser for ISCP in New York (2015-18). She also consulted and designed the artists’ mentoring program at Mana Contemporary for the New Jersey, Miami, and Chicago campuses (2017-19). She served as an advisor to the Grounds for Sculpture in Hamilton, NJ (2020), and was a consultant director for Hawaii Contemporary Triennial (2020-21). She has also participated as a jury member for The Shed Open Call 2022, AHL Korean Contemporary Art Prize 2021/22, Creative Time Award 2020, Vilcek Foundation Art Prize 2017, the Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art Washington Street Jury (2016), and the Akbank Contemporary Artists Prize 2014, for which she also curated the shortlisted finalists’ exhibition.
Sara has been an arts writer since 2002 and has served as the desk editor for West and Central Asia for ArtAsiaPacific magazine since 2004. She has written for numerous art journals, books, exhibition catalogs, and peer-reviewed academic periodicals. Her writing has been translated into Arabic, Chinese, Farsi, French, German, Italian, Russian, and Spanish. She has also written several long-form art historical critical essays for artist monographs, including Jeffrey Gibson (Denver Museum of Art), Inci Eviner (Istanbul Modern), Diana Al-Hadid (New York University Press/ Skira), Lida Abdul (Frac Lorraine, 51st Venice Biennial & the Banff Centre), Reza Aramesh (The Collectors’ Edition Dubai), Farhad Ahrania (Rose Issa Projects), Nadia Kaabi-Linke (KunstMuseum Bonn/ Kerber), Asad Faulwell (Zero), Fateh Al-Moudarres (Mathaf Modern Museum of Arab Art) and Shahzia Sikander (Tufts University), among others. For a full list visit writing.
Sara has lectured and participated in panels and discussions internationally, including at the Zentrum fur Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe, Germany; Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island; San Jose State University; Bishkek Historical Museum, Kyrgyzstan; Queen Mary University, Westminster University; Sharjah Biennial March Meeting, United Arab Emirates; Intelligence Squared, United Kingdom, London; the State Museum of History of Uzbekistan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan; Sotheby’s Institute of Art, London; Institut du Monde Arabe, Paris; American University of Sharjah; Casa Arabe, Madrid; Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Phillips Collection, Washington; University of Sydney, Australia; the New Museum, New York; New York University; The Whitney Museum of American Art; MacKenzie Art Gallery; Duke University and Nasher Museum; John F Kennedy Center, Washington; Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti, Milan; Princeton University; New York School of Visual Arts; New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program; ING Creatives Dubai; New York Law School; and Yale University, among others. From 2011 to 2013, she taught courses for Sotheby’s Masters in Contemporary Art London. Visit lectures and talks for a comprehensive list.
Sara and her work have been featured in major arts and national press, including Artforum, Art Africa, Artnet, Arab News, ArtAsiaPacific, BBC, Brownbook, Canvas, Contemporary Practices, Cultured, CNN Style, Harper’s Bazaar, Financial Times, L’Officiel, Al Jazeera, The National UAE, The New York Times, The Observer, Wall Street International, and others. See press for full list.
Sara Raza 