PARSONS FINE ARTS

Sara Raza earned a BA (hons) in English Literature and History of Art and an MA in Art History and Theory, both from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She also pursued studies towards her Ph.D. at the Royal College of Art. Raza is the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator for the Middle East and North Africa based at the New York museum where she organized the touring exhibition “But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and North Africa,” which will travel to the Pera Museum, Istanbul in 2017. Raza has curated exhibitions and projects for several international biennials and festivals, including
the “Tashkent Biennial: Quotations from Daily Life,” Art Gallery of Uzbekistan (2011); “Rhizoma (generation in waiting)” Collateral Event, Venice Biennale (2013); and “Baku Public Art Festival: A Drop of Sky,” Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan (2015). She also co-curated the “Bishkek International: In the Shadow of Fallen Heroes,” at the Bishkek Historical Museum and Alto Square, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in 2005. She has organized a number of exhibitions for Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates, including solo presentations of the work of Adel Abidin, Wafaa Bilal, and Mohamed Kazem, and the group exhibitions “Migrasophia (migration + philosophy),” (2012) and “The Beginning of Thinking is Geometric,” (2013). Formerly, Raza was the head of education at Yarat Contemporary Art Space, Baku, Azerbaijan, and curator of public programs at Tate Modern, London (2006–8). Raza writes for numerous art publications and is the West and Central Asia desk editor of ArtAsiaPacific. She is the author of Punk Orientalism: Central Asia’s Contemporary Art Revolution, which will be published in 2017 by Black Dog Publishing, London. She was the winner of the United Kingdom Arts Council’s Emerging Curator’s Award at the South London Gallery (2004), and the recipient of the ArtTable New Leadership Award (2016).