Sidra Khawaja is an interdisciplinary creative practitioner, educator and musician. She is a recipient of the prestigious Fulbright scholarship. With a background in Designed Objects & Visual Communication, her practice traverses the realms of design, art and contemporary craft. Taking inspiration from cultural artifacts and rituals, she is interested in crafting compelling narratives often with a performative element, seeking to create interactive, sensory public experiences through objects, installations, multimedia etc. Her practice also serves to record silent Kashmiri narratives and issues surrounding identity and representation, while divulging the overlooked costs of postcolonial nationalism in South Asia. She was selected for WantedDesign’s ‘Emerging Designer Showcase’ at New York Design Week(2021). She was also shortlisted for Global Design Graduate show (2021) in collaboration with Gucci, out of 5200 graduates. She currently serves as a visiting faculty at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore.
Sidra Khawaja is the co-founder of Kashmir Kollective, an independent group that aims at humanizing the complex socio-political and cultural aspects of the Kashmir conflict in South Asia– a dynamic and volatile residue of the 1947 partition of the Indian subcontinent. Through creative projects & screenings, the collective focuses on devising an alternative discourse as well as a constructive course of actions, thus reimagining an alternate peaceful future in the light of cultural and artistic traditions of the state. As part of her creative practice, Khawaja employs a critical approach to investigate indigenous objects, symbols, food culture, rituals & communal practices of the region; extrapolating them to relate their vernacular visual language to the contemporary issues surrounding Kashmir.
Samovar - Kashmiri tea kettle
Glazed Stoneware
10” x 10” x 7”
2021
Khatamband – The Game
Video duration: 3:42 mins
2022
Glazed Stoneware
10” x 10” x 7”
2021
Khatamband – The Game
Video duration: 3:42 mins
2022
Rug, Map Shawl of Kashmir
Digital Illustration, Woven Cotton tapestry50” x 60”
2021
Military kettleGlazed Stoneware
10” x 22” x 8”
2021
A Forlorn Paradise
Woven cotton tapestry, Ceramics, Paper, Glass, tea brew & leaves, film script
2021
2021