ABOUT THE ARTIST

3rd Culture Queen is a Third Culture Millennial born and raised in California by Pakistani immigrant parents, currently residing between Dubai, London, and California.

After spending 15+ years in corporate America, working at top fortune 100 companies and the United Nations as a Social Impact Strategist, living and working all over the world, 3rd Culture Queen recently transitioned to pursing visual art and writing full time. Although never having had formal art/design training, her experimental mixed-media works offer an expression of self-reflection and social commentary, highlighting Muslim and South Asian heritage and culture, their adaptation to survive an upbringing in white 90’s America, and how adulthood has been inadvertently spent unpacking, understanding, and celebrating that adaptation.

Her works focus on celebrating tradition, questioning societal boxes, embracing duality, highlighting the ingenuity of the immigrant, 3rd culture experiences, diasporic excellence, and futurism. 3rd Culture Queen has always had a fondness for Pakistani textiles, having accompanied her mother and aunts to the tailors in Karachi since childhood during her visits to Pakistan every summer. She anchors her works in these textiles, highlighting their use and beauty beyond the artistry of South Asian fashion, and using them in unorthodox ways. From flags, to disco balls, to canvas, to cardboard.

3rd Culture Queen uses textiles because they carry stories and histories, where the art becomes a dialogue between the personal and the collective, the traditional and the contemporary. Celebrating the joy and vibrancy of expression beyond boxes and norms, and in spite of systems of oppression. This body of work is ultimately an experimentation in diasporadic futurism.