Mohsin Shafi

Born in 1982 in Sahiwal (Pakistan)
Lives and works in Lahore (Pakistan)

Mohsin Shafi received both his Master’s and BFA degrees from the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore. He is currently a visiting faculty member in the MA Visual Arts Department at the NCA, Lahore. Shafi has showcased his work at prominent galleries in Pakistan as well as in international exhibitions. He was part of the Vasl Artists residency in 2010 in Karachi and was an Artist in Residence at the Rondo Studios in Graz, Austria in 2012. As well as being included in significant collections in Pakistan, his work is in the permanent collection of The Museum of Sacred Art (MOSA) in Belgium and recently been acquired for the permanent collection of the Department of Book Art at Mills College, San Francisco. His images have also been used as covers for books by Agnar Artúvertin, Martin Walser and Gabriel Rosenstock, as well as other writers and poets. Mohsin is an active member of the Awami Art Collective, which is a unique group of artists and activists intervening in the public space in Pakistan for the cause of peaceful coexistence and the celebration of diversity. 

Mohsin Shafi writes of his submission for KB17: “The visuals in the installation intend to articulate the notions of safety within physical and intellectual spaces of representation: the safety of being visible for having non-conforming ideas within a militant-state and of being proclaimed the Other by the spectator’s eye. This is the danger of being seen through the lens of sexual taboos, gender binaries, ethnic hierarchies, religious freedoms and the public availability of that information. These are the struggles of being looked at and judged, of being reduced to a cliché or a cultural smear. Questioning how to bear witness to the complexities of the present times, the installation responds to the aesthetic and ambiguities of our society.”