Tara Asgar is a Brooklyn-based Bangladeshi Transgender (she/her) artist, educator, and activist. Tara’s hybrid practice utilizes archive, history, and personal narrative to create political and community-engaged
collaborations around LGBTQIA+ liberation, Immigrant stories, and community organizing. Through public performances, texts, and videos, Tara explores themes of gender, desire, displacement, trauma, and migration. Tara’s work has garnered attention from critic Hans Ulrich Obrist and has been featured in publications such as Hyperallergic, Le Arte, Frieze Magazine, Emergency Index, and The Daily Star. Her visual art and durational performances have been showcased globally, including at the Dhaka Art Summits, Asian Art Biennale, Queens Museum, Pen World Voice Festival, Asian Art initiative, and Shrine Empire gallery. Tara has been awarded residencies and fellowships at the University of Maine, Montalvo Arts Center, University of Connecticut, and Oxbow School of Art. Actively involved in grassroots activism, Tara founded the Bangladesh Trans, Hijra, and Koti Rights Coalition, focusing on the economic and social well-being of these communities in Bangladesh. With a BFA from the University of Dhaka in Painting/Printmaking and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Performance, Tara has held visiting artist positions at various educational institutions in the USA and is currently a 2024 NYSCA interdisciplinary/moving image awardee and a visiting fellow at Stony Brook University’s future histories studio.
