Aiza Ahmed

Tightrope, 2026
Acrylic on paper
12 x 9 inches (30.5 x 23 cm)

Courtesy of the artist, Aiza Ahmed

Selected by The Drawing Center

Aiza Ahmed (b. 1997, Lahore, Pakistan) is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice is grounded in drawing and extends across painting, sculpture, video, and installation. Her work engages borders, migrations, public histories, and the familial archives of the Indian subcontinent, returning to the line in its many forms: drawn, crossed, inherited. Through humor, performance, and theatricality, Ahmed stages compositions pulled from encounters both real and imagined, unsettling fixed ideas of nationhood and belonging. Her work investigates the spectrum of masculinity—those who project power and those forced to perform it.

Ahmed received her MFA (Painting) from the Rhode Island School of Design (2024) and BFA from Cornell University (2020). Solo and two-person presentations include Footnotes, Sargent's Daughters, Art Basel Qatar, Doha (2026); The Music Room, Sargent's Daughters, New York (2025); Border Play, SPRING/BREAK Art Show, New York (2025); and No Father—No Frontier, Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia (2025). Selected group exhibitions include The FLAG Art Foundation, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Arlington, VA; the RISD Museum, Providence; Half Gallery, New York; Franklin Parrasch Gallery, New York; Rajiv Menon Contemporary, Los Angeles; and VM Art Gallery, Karachi.

Her work is held in public collections including Qatar Museums, ICA Miami, the RISD Museum, and Brown University, among others. Ahmed is the recipient of the 2025 Peter Hort Emerging Artist Award from the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, as well as the RISD Fellowship, the Edith Stone and Walter King Memorial Prize, and the David R. Bean Prize. She has participated in residencies with William Kentridge and the Centre for the Less Good Idea, Rhode Island; The Macedonia Institute, Chatham, NY; Silver Art Projects, New York; and the Arts Intensive Study Program at Fire Station, Doha, Qatar.