Fatma Shah
Fatma Shah is a freelance consultant with more than twenty years’ experience in Economic Development and Finance. She has a keen interest in art, literature and cultural heritage. Since 2018 she has been a volunteer curator at APWA Crafts with a motivation to revive interest and promote a wide range of artisanal products. In 2010 she formed Jadeed, an arts management platform, and has curated a few exhibitions and events. She occasionally writes about the visual arts and artists, cultural heritage and reviews books in her areas of interest.
Nimra Khan
Nimra Khan is an independent art critic and curator. She graduated from the Indus Vallery School of Art and Architecture with a Bachelor in Fine Art in 2012. She contributes critical reviews and discourse on Pakistani art for various publications, including Dawn EOS magazine, ArtNow Pakistan, Youlin Magazine, The Friday Times, Newsline, and Nigaah Art Magazine.
Rumana Husain
Rumana Husain is a writer, artist and educator. She is the author of two coffee-table books on Karachi, and has authored and illustrated over 60 children’s books. Four of her books have won awards in Pakistan, Nepal and India. She has been a contributor to various newspapers and magazines, and written hundreds of articles, travelogues, art and book reviews, and has also conducted numerous interviews in the print and electronic media.
Jovita Alvares
Jovita Alvares is an artist and art writer from Karachi. She graduated with the title of Valedictorian (Class of 2016) from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture with a BFA. She frequently writes for local publications. Recipient of the Imran Mir Art Prize2017 and Resident Artist of the 4th Sanat Residency 2017 she regularly participates in group shows and artist talks.
Numair Abbasi
Shah Numair Ahmed Abbasi is a multidisciplinary artist and a freelance writer who lives and works in Karachi. He completed his BFA with a distinction from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2014 where he specialised in sculpture and photography. Abbasi has since exhibited both locally and internationally. He was the recipient of the Gasworks Pakistan Residency 2018 in London, and Antropical Artists Residency 2019 in Steinfort. He was a Visiting Artist Fellow of the Laxmi Mittal South Asian Institute at Harvard University, Cambridge in 2020. Abbasi currently teaches Art and Design at a private O level institution.
Zain Mustafa
Zain Mustafa is an architect and educationist based in Karachi. He is also the founder of Cube Edutours – a unique heritage architecture education tourism initiative, taking learning about bio-regional shared history to heritage sites across Pakistan. An animal rights activist and empath, he is the President of SPAR and has designed the concept for the Karachi Zoo Revamp program.
Maha Minhaj
Maha Minhaj is a visual artist and writer whose practice ranges from drawing and photography to performance art. She has exhibited and performed in various local and international shows.
Alongside her practice she is a co-founder of Poiesis.socialart which curates and archives socially engaged art practices, hosts workshops and creates academic podcasts.
Ammara Jabbar
Ammara Jabbar is an artist and writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. Jabbar graduated from the Indus
Valley School Of Art and Architecture in 2015, since then she has displayed her artwork nationally and
internationally. She was the recipient of the Imran Mir Art Prize in 2018 and is currently a Visiting
Artist Fellow at the Mittal Institute at Harvard University.
Myla Essa
Myla Essa is a Karachi based Interior designer and a graduate of The Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture. Her work specializes in creating holistic spaces and furniture pieces that facilitate intentional living through mindful design. She also writes frequently for Libas Now magazine and is the co-founder of Vile, a platform that seeks to curate culture and heritage alongside contemporary design.
Nillofur Farrukh
Niilofur Farrukh is a Karachi based art interventionist whose seminal initiatives have expanded the space for art publication, curation and public art in Pakistan. Her primary interest lies in issues of decolonization and as a writer/curator her focus has been on the excavation of lost interdisciplinary connections within the cultural matrix. She has several books to her credit and has been a columnist with Dawn and Newsline. The cornerstone of her curatorial practice underlines a more inclusive social dialogue through art in public spaces, something she is fully committed to as the CEO of the Karachi Biennale.
Iona Fergusson
Iona Fergusson is a curator, producer and public programmer specialising in lens-based work. She began her photographic career at Vogue India as Photo Editor. Her curatorial projects include exhibitions at Ffotogallery in Cardiff, Blast! Festival in West Bromwich and Peckham 24 in London. She was Director of Public Programming at the Delhi Photo Festival 2015 and curated the talks programme at Peckham 24 in 2019. She was the selector for South Asia on the 10×10 Photobooks publication How We See: Photobooks by Women published in 2018.
Nageen Shaikh
Nageen Shaikh is an art historian and critic, an industrial designer, and an academic of social sciences and liberal arts. Her research interests include the evolution, production, and dissemination of art in South Asia with a transnational and global focus, studies in materiality, and practice of design. She was previously a Fulbright Scholar at SUNY Stony Brook University and tweets @nageenjs.
Haseeb Ullah Zafar
Haseeb Ullah Zafar is an independent curator, researcher, writer, and artist. His current interests lie in investigating the intricacies of born-digital artistic practices and the curator’s role within the labyrinthine socio-cultural context of the Internet. He investigates the visual art form of ‘Internet Memes’, electronic cultural currency propagated by humans in their millions on a daily basis, that which are being displayed with increasing frequency within physical spaces by unpacking the value structures involved in their commissioning, exhibiting, and collecting within the art ecosphere. Haseeb holds an MA in Curating Contemporary Art from the Royal College of Art, London and a BFA in Visual arts from the National College of Arts, Lahore. He is currently based in Lahore, Pakistan and is the curatorial assistant for the Ambiance Boutique Art Hotels.
Arushi Vats
Arushi Vats writes on arts and culture, in the form of reviews of exhibitions and photo books, as well as long-form essays on cinema and visual art. Her writings have been published on online platforms such as Alternative South Asia Photography, LSE International History, Critical Collective, Write | Art | Connect, Scroll, Mint, and The Quint; additionally she has authored curatorial notes for Galerie Mirchandani Steinruecke, Mumbai and Aicon Gallery, New York. She lives in New Delhi.
Saima Adil Sitwat
Saima Adil Sitwat is a writer and educator. She is the author of her memoir American Muslim: An Immigrant’s Journey and facilitates classes and conversations on race, religion, and identity politics. She lives in Baltimore, Maryland. with her husband and their two daughters. Saima can be reached via Instagram @betterstories4all or her website: saimasitwat.com.
Shireen Ikramullah Khan
Shireen Ikramullah Khan is a Pakistani artist, art critic, educator and museologist with a background in painting and printmaking. She completed her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from the National College of Arts in Lahore in 2006. In 2009, she completed her Masters in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from The University of Manchester, which included an internship at the Manchester Museum to profile gallery visitors and assess improvements.
She is an active member of AICA (International Association of Art Critics) and writer for several art publications worldwide.
Based in Europe since 2017, Shireen continues to maintain her own visual art practice, participating in several exhibitions across Pakistan and other countries. She is, in parallel, working with international artists to curate shows in Pakistan as a means of building stronger bridges for sharing of culture and knowledge.
Razin Ruben
Razin Rubin is a visual artist who was born and raised in Sukkur, Sindh. She completed her BFA in 2016 with a distinction in thesis from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi. Rubin was also awarded the IVS Founders Award 2016. She has exhibited her work both locally and internationally and has also participated in two artists’ residencies, including ‘4th Sanat Residency’ with Sanat Initiative and ‘Taaza Tareen 9 – Regional Green Dialogues’ under Vasl Artists’ Association in collaboration with Henrich Boll Stiftung. Rubin is currently working with Vasl Artists’ Association and is adjunct faculty at Imperial Tutorial College (ITC), Karachi.
Sara Yawar
Sara Yawar is a designer, artist and writer based in Karachi, Pakistan. She graduated from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and currently works at Junaid Jamshed (J.) as a textile designer. Yawar has contributed to publications like ArtNow Pakistan, DAWN’s EOS Magazine and ADA (Architecture | Design | Art) and continues to do so. She also enjoys zine-making, which she recently worked upon in collaboration with Indian artists through The Pind Collective.