We are delighted to welcome contemporary artist Risham Syed, our 2025 Frere Hall South Asian artist-in-residence.
@rishamsyed, @oxford_uni’s second Pakistani artist resident, will be based within our Department of Eastern Art to closely view and handle objects in the collection.
Risham is a Lahore-based artist and Professor of Fine Arts at Beaconhouse National University, where she also leads the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts and Design. Her practice spans painting, textiles, installation, and found materials to explore layered questions of history, sociology, and politics. The city plays a central role in her work, as do inquiries into how South Asia’s colonial past continues to shape present-day realities in the Global South.
Risham explores these questions by positioning her paintings within broader spatial and conceptual contexts, often through installation and the use of objects with social and political connotations. Her use of fabric, embroidery, and material references brings together the personal and the historical, weaving the past into the visual and political texture of the present.
Of the residency, the artist says:
‘It’s an honour to be invited as a resident at the Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, as a visual artist and academic based in Lahore. My practice, shaped alongside leading the Fine Arts Department at the School of Visual Arts and Design, BNU, moves between making and teaching. Engaging with the museum’s Eastern Art collection will offer an opportunity to reflect on entangled histories of trade, empire, and the political forces that shaped visual culture.’
The Frere Hall artist-in-residence programme supports the Ashmolean to develop a dialogue between Oxford and South Asian artists. The residency aims to support South Asia-based artists with the opportunity to access the Museum's collections, while exploring & strengthening their own practice.
