Shah Numair Ahmed Abbasi is from Karachi, Pakistan. He completed his BFA with a distinction from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in 2014. He was the recipient of the Gasworks Pakistan Residency 2018 in London, Antropical Artists Residency 2019 in Steinfort, and the Laxmi Mittal South Asian Institute Visiting Artist Fellowship at Harvard University, Cambridge in 2020. He has been writing reviews and discourses on art for various publications since 2015 and was the art writer in residence for Vasl Artists Association’s 13th Taaza Tareen Residency Program in 2021. Abbasi has also taught Art and Design at private O-level institutions and served as faculty at his alma mater. He is pursuing an MFA in Arts and Humanities (due completion in 2025) at the Royal College of Art in London.
Working across mixed-media drawings, paintings, and photography, Abbasi fabricates narratives rooted in his experiences within a society that rigidly polices gender and sexuality. Popular culture, anecdotes, and colloquialisms inform the humorous reflections. The recurring male nude figure questions or subverts the idealised masculine virtues. Recent practice expands on his impression of digital spaces and social media as parallel realms where human behaviour and expression manifest differently. He interrogates the boundaries between inherent and performative behaviour, primarily within queer interactions amidst closeted, dislocated, ephemeral, and motive-driven settings.
Abbasi is currently building a repertory of South Asian camp aesthetics. Situating his focus at the intersection of camp and nostalgia, he probes how the theatrics of artifice and excess can carry personal or shared angst and grief
