Khushboo (b. 1994, Karachi, Pakistan) is an artist, educator, and researcher working across painting, sculpture, and installation. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from Goldsmiths, University of London (2022–2024), supported by a fully funded Inlaks Scholarship, a BVA in Painting from MSU Baroda, and a BSc in Zoology from St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad.
Her work has been exhibited in India, London & Edinburgh. Khushboo lives and works in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK.
Concept Note/ Artist Statement:
I make art that draws from the universal experience of shifting places, finding new homes, and adjusting and absorbing into new spaces. My paintings, drawings, ceramics, textiles, and installations are built studying the movement of humans and beyond humans, that are intertwined with the complexities of migration, land ownership, identity & belonging, and climate change, take centre stage in my art.
My relocation from Pakistan to India in 2009 increased my fascination with maps, borders, city limits, and everything related to geographical locations. I find it surprising that borders can create and divide places at the same time. Since then, I started creating memorabilia through objects, photographs, and memories directed towards counter-mapping and alternative archiving. And then my migration to the UK fuelled it further, and I delved into visual storytelling through colours, patterns, markmaking, and crafting techniques. I created art in response to the colonial systems that continue to shape our present-day lives, human displacement, and identity politics by reimagining historical data and archival collections that I found in the archives and libraries of the UK.
Currently, I have expanded my research and artmaking beyond human entities and the environment to make connections between ecological concerns and human issues of migration, identity, and cultural belonging.