Qasim Riza Shaheen

Qasim Riza Shaheen (born 1971) is a British artist and writer based in Manchester. Working across participatory performance, installation, film and photography, Shaheen’s practice explores memory, autofiction, notions of beauty, sexuality, love and, more broadly, fundamental concerns about human nature.

“In films, video performances, photographs and mixed-media drawings, Qasim Riza Shaheen presents his affecting reflections on love and loss… For him, self-portraiture is more a matter of imaginative self-creation than any pretence of authentic self-definition… His enactments of queer romance, straight social alienation, and the universal melodramas of unrequited desire are choreographed with painful sensitivity.” (the Guardian)

Qasim Riza Shaheen’s work has been exhibited and programmed widely, including at Asia Contemporary Art Week, New York; Cornerhouse, Manchester; mac in Birmingham; Southbank Centre, London; SPILL Festival of Performance, London; Brighton International Festival; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; Liverpool Biennial; Arnolfini, Bristol; National Review of Live Art, Glasgow, Scotland; La Boral, Gijon; Trouble Festival, Les Halles, Brussels; CityArts and Project Arts Centre, Dublin; Corona Cork Film Festival, Ireland; Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia; and Alhamra National Gallery in Lahore, Pakistan, where he was invited as an international resident artist and subsequently as an Associate Professor at the prestigious National College of Arts in Lahore and Islamabad.

Qasim Riza Shaheen has received several Arts Council of England bursaries as well as international commissions. He is featured on the British Council’s Theatre and Dance network which promotes the best of UK performing arts. He was nominated for the Northern Art Prize in 2010. He has had several acquisitions made on his work by museums, galleries and private collectors.