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Khadim Ali

Born in 1978 Quetta, Pakistan, Khadim Ali currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia and Kabul, Afghanistan. Ali was trained in classical miniature painting at the National College of Arts in Lahore and in mural painting and calligraphy in Tehran. Khadim Ali received his Master of Fine Art (MFA) from University of New South Wales in 2016. He belongs to the minority ethnic Hazara who are the inhabitants of the central part of Afghanistan, where in 2001 the colossal sixth-century Buddha statues were destroyed. The Shahnameh (Book of Kings) was read to Ali by his grandfather and its illustrations were his first lessons in art history.

‘My love of poetry stems from my grandfather reading to me from the Shahnameh,’ Ali says. ‘He was a Shahnameh singer and when Hazara refugees came to Pakistan, they would gather in our house and my grandfather would sing the stories of heroes and demons for them, the bright and the dark sides of humanity. I always thought of myself as a hero, as Rustam. But then when the story ended the hero gets killed and this was very painful for me. It was the demons who survived,’ Ali says, stoically.

..."I came across these textbooks in the national library, stating that the Hazaras are infidels, the Hazaras are ugly creatures, the Hazaras are living in the caves of the mountain like demons," he says.

"All these years I had lived a hero's life but it was a false life. I was actually a demon. I had been demonised and dehumanised, and my parents were demonised and displaced. It was then that I switched from my hero to the demon, and I started painting demons."

"My demons are the story of my historical self and a people who are displaced and shelterless in the world. Demonising is the dehumanising of the Hazaras."

Exhibitions

Khadim Ali has exhibited in recent solo exhibitions that include: What Now My Friend, New York (2020), Fragmented Memories, Gertrude Contemporary, Melbourne, Australia (2018), The Arrival, Milani Gallery, Brisbane, Australia (2016), Transitions / Evacuation, ARNDT, Singapore (2015), The Haunted Lotus, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2013) and Rustam, Rohtas2 Lahore, Pakistan (2009).

His recent group exhibitions include: Between the sun and moon Lahore Biennale, Lahore Pakistan (2020), In one drop of water, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney (2019), gohyang: home at the Seoul Museum of Art in Seoul, South Korea (2019), Enough خلاص Khalas, University of New South Wales Galleries, Sydney, Australia, Waqt al-tagherr: Time of Change, ACE Open, Adelaide, Australia (2018), The National 2017 – New Australian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia (2017), NSW Visual Artist Fellowship Exhibition, Art Bank Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2017), Biennale de Lyon, Rendez-vous, Musée d’art contemporain de Lyon (2017), Mythologies of the Oppressed, Rohtas 2 Art Gallery, Lahore, Pakistan (2016) and Refugees, Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Sydney, Australia (2016), 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), Venice, Italy, in Documenta -13 (2012), Kassel, Germany, The Asia Pacific Triennial 5, Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia (2006) and the presentation No Country: Contemporary Art for South East Asia at the Guggenheim, New York, USA (2013).

Acquisitions

Khadim Ali’s work is held in numerous public collections, including: Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; British Museum, London; Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan; Foreign Office, Islamabad; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; and Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.