Nadira Husain

Nadira Husain (born 1980) is a French artist of Indian origin based in Berlin. Her work explores visual forms related to issues of post-migration, transculturality and cultural hybridity. Her practice begins with painting, where she draws on heterogeneous interpretations of art histories beyond the Eurocentric perspective. By appropriating symbols and stories from different cultural registers connected to her own multicultural background, she follows logics of assemblage, connectivity and relationships in form and narrative. References to Mughal miniatures meet European comics and join anthropomorphic beings from furry fandom who immerse themselves in Sufi Islamic culture. In the flattening of fore- and background, perspective and scale, Husain's paintings eliminate inherent formal hierarchies. Her paintings often unfold into spatial installations where the notion of a centre is swept away.
Besides her art practice, she works as a guest professor at the Berlin University of the Arts, where she co-teaches with Marina Naprushkina since 2021, and is a lecturer and a mentor at foundationClass at the Berlin-Weissensee Art Academy since 2017. She is regularly involved in self-organized collective initiatives and projects that are grounded in anti-racist and intersectional ethos in the field of art.