Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1969 Lahore, Pakistan

Year of Migration to the UK: 1980

Biography

Curator, writer, researcher, and co-founder of art organisations, Hammad Nasar was born in Lahore, India in 1969 and grew up in Karachi, Pakistan. Trained as an accountant, Nasar immigrated to London in the late 1980s in order to study at Birkbeck College, University of London, taking evening classes in art history, followed by a postgraduate diploma at Goldsmiths College, London. In the mid-1990s, Nasar returned to Pakistan to work in banking. Simultaneously, he began writing film reviews for a local newspaper and gradually extended his remit to cover the art scene. After Lahore artist Usman Saeed sought Nasar's advice about the London art world, he helped organise Saeed's exhibition at the prestigious Royal Society of Arts (RSA). Since then, Nasar has been instrumental in fostering numerous cross-cultural interactions, including co-founding and co-managing London's pioneering hybrid arts organisation, Green Cardamom, with his partner, Anita Dawood (2004–13). As a curator, writer and facilitator, he continues to actively participate in decolonising art history by addressing the orthodox Western-centred narratives and approaching a more global approach.

Nasar is recognised for emphasising collaboration, research, and focus within his exhibition projects, often working in the UK regions, out of the orbit of the London-centric artworld. He has organised or co-organised numerous exhibitions across the UK and worldwide. His work, deeply rooted in principles of inclusiveness and collective action, does not shy away from addressing historical and ongoing political issues. Though his exhibitions reveal the fractures within the national consciousness, they simultaneously suggest avenues towards healing. In that vein, Nasar has stated that his projects ‘make peace with difficult histories and traumatic pasts without being paralysed by them […] to shape a common future,’ (Spence, FT, 2023). As a curator he says, ‘It’s not about building institutions, it’s about building infrastructure. […] It’s not enough to pull in visitors. You have to connect with communities, create legacy,’ (Spence, 2023).

Nassar has held many influential roles in the cultural sector in the UK and beyond, including: Senior Research Fellow at the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, London; Executive Director of the Stuart Hall Foundation, London; Head of Research & Programmes at Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong; board member of Mophradat, Brussels; a contributor to Tate Etc.; Principal Research Fellow at the Decolonising Arts Institute, UAL, where he is developing the ‘Curating Nation’ project (which analyses the current narratives in British art); Lead Curator at Herbert Art Gallery & Museum supporting Coventry’s City of Culture Programme in 2021–22 (which included curating the 2021 Turner Prize exhibition); Arts Director for the Festival of Muslim Cultures; and an advisor to several institutions including Lahore Biennial Foundation; Alserkal Avenue, Dubai; Delfina Foundation, London; Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester; and the Whitechapel Gallery, London.

His curatorial projects include: curator of Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play, UAE National Pavilion, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017); co-curator (with Kate Jesson) of Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2018–19); co-curator with Irene Aristizábal of the British Art Show 9 (2020–22, Hayward Gallery and touring). In 2023, the exhibition, Divided Selves: Legacies, Memories, Belonging, co-curated with Rosie Addenbrooke and Alice Swatton, opened at the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry. Participants were sourced from the Herbert’s own ‘Peace and Reconciliation’ collection, along with selections from the British Council Collection. This entire latter collection, together with the Arts Council Collection, is due for a full transfer to Coventry in 2024, coinciding with the city’s designation as the new home for the National Collections Centre. This project is part of the UK’s long-overdue re-evaluation of culture and distribution of funds across the regions. Nasar commented about the redistribution of funds in terms of how it would affect London: ‘It shouldn’t be an either/or thing. What the British government spends on culture is pitiful compared with other European countries,’ (Spence, 2023). He also believes that the department of culture should not be considered in the same category as sports and media, but rather it should be grouped with education, since neither are, as he states, ‘investments. They are rights. And that requires a very different conversation,’ (Spence, 2023). In 2024 Nasar curated the exhibition, Beyond the Page: South Asian Miniature Painting and Britain, 1600 to Now (MK gallery, touring to the Lightbox, Woking in 2025).

Hammad Nasar lives and works in London.

Related books

Rachel Spence, 'Curator Hammad Nasar: ‘What if all Turner’s best paintings were in Lahore?', The Financial Times, 11 February 2023
Jane Alison, Hilary Floe and Charlotte Flint eds., Postwar modern: new art in Britain 1945-1965, (London: Prestel, 2022)
Hammad Naser and Irene Aristizábal, British Art Show 9, (London: Hayward Gallery Publishing, 2021)
Hammad Nasar and Karin Zitzewitz, 'Art Histories of Excess: Hammad Nasar in Conversation with Karin Zitzewitz', Art journal, Vol. 77, No. 4, October 2018, pp. 108-114
Hammad Nasar with Michele Robecchi eds., Rock, paper, scissors: positions in play, (Milan: Mousse Publishing, 2017)
Hammad Naser et al, Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space, (Green Cardamom; Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, London, Ithaca, NY, 2012)
Anita Dawood and Hammad Nasar eds., Beyond the Page: Contemporary Art from Pakistan, (London: Asia House, 2006)

Related organisations

Clore Leadership Programme (Fellow)
Goldsmiths' College, University of London ( AHRC-funded Research Fellow)
Green Cardamom (Co-founder )
Henry Moore Foundation Grants (Board Member )
Herbert Art Gallery & Museum (Lead Curator)
Paul Mellon Centre (Senior Research Fellow)
Stuart Hall Foundation (Inaugural Executive Director)
Tate’s magazine: Tate Etc. (Member of the Editorial Board )
University of the Arts, London (Principal Research Fellow at the Decolonising Arts Institute)

Selected exhibitions

Co-curated with Rosie Addenbrooke and Alice Swatton, Divided Selves: Legacies, Memories, Belonging, Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, Coventry (2023)
Co-curated with Irene Aristizábal, British Art Show 9, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester Art Gallery, HOME, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2022)
Co-curted with Kate Jesson, Speech Acts: Reflection-Imagination-Repetition, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester (2018–19)
Rock, Paper, Scissors: Positions in Play, UAE’s national pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017)
Excessive Enthusiasm: Ha Bik Chuen and the Archive as Practice, Asia Art Archive, Hong Kong (2015)
Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, Cornell University, Ithaca, US (2005–13)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Hammad Nasar]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Hammad Nasar curator