Dr Sara Raza, Art Historian, Curator & Scholar

Dr Sara Raza is an award-winning global art curator, art historian, and scholar. She is the author of Punk Orientalism: The Art of Rebellion (Black Dog Press, 2022) and the founder of New York-based Punk Orientalism Studio, a global curatorial platform specializing in visual cultures from postcolonial and post-Soviet perspectives, and a Core Critic and Faculty member at the Yale School of Art. She is currently Chief Curator (at large) of the Center for Contemporary Arts Tashkent (CCA), working between New York and Tashkent, having previously served as CCA’s inaugural Artistic Director.

Dr Raza received the 11th ArtTable New Leadership Award for Women in the Arts and the Red Burns Fellowship for distinguished creative practitioners and researchers, and Deutsche Bank and Apollo Magazine recognized her as one of the world’s “40 Under 40” leading art thinkers. Over the past two decades, she has curated exhibitions and projects for major international biennials, festivals, and museums, and penned scholarly texts. Previously held curatorial positions at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, and Tate Modern, London.

Through her global curatorial practice, Punk Orientalism Studio, she works across Asia, the Caucasus, the Middle East and North Africa, Europe, and North America.  The Studio’s activities include curatorial knowledge, publishing, lecturing, creating curricula, and contemporary collecting practices. Recent Studio projects include collaborations with Mathaf: Arab Museum of Art and Lusail Museum,  Doha, the International Center of Photography, New York, Tufts University Art Galleries, Somerville, MA, Rubin Museum, New York, the Arts and Culture Development Foundation, Uzbekistan, and the Ministry of Culture of Saudi Arabia, among others.