Keli Safia Maksud

Keli Safia Maksud is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working in sound, sculpture, installation, printmaking and embroidery. Concerned with histories of colonial encounters and its effects on memory and identities, Maksud’s practice favors the space of in-between and its threshold and works towards destabilizing received histories in order to expose fictions of the state.

Maksud earned her BFA in Painting from the Ontario College of Art and Design University, a Diploma in Art and Curatorial Studies at the New Centre for Research and Practice and an MFA in Visual Arts at Columbia University. Her work has shown at Goodman Gallery, Salon 94 in New York, NY, Huxley Parlour in UK, the Bamako Biennial in Mali, National Museum of Contemporary Art – Seoul in South Korea, Galería Nueva in Spain and the Biennial of Contemporary Art Sesc Videobrasil in Brazil. Maksud has been awarded fellowships and grants from Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council, the Ontario Council for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has been published in OCULA Magazine, The Swiss Institute, LEAP Magazine and A Space Gallery.