Sara Raza

Sara Raza is an award-winning contemporary art curator and writer based in New York City, where she founded the curatorial studio Punk Orientalism, which specialises in global art and visual cultures, mainly from Central and Western Asia and its international diaspora. Sara a member of the faculty at the School of Visual Arts for the MA Curatorial Practice Program and teaches at New York University’s ITP/ IMA. Between 2015–2018, she was the Guggenheim UBS MAP Curator of Middle Eastern and North African art in New York where she built the collection and organised the acclaimed exhibition But a Storm Is Blowing from Paradise, which debuted in the capital in 2016, later travelling to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan in 2018.

Alongside this, Sara has curated numerous other exhibitions for international museums, biennials and festivals, including the Rubin Museum of Art, New York; Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art, Doha, Qatar; the 55th Venice and Tashkent Biennials; and the 3rd Baku Public Art Festival, among others. Sara has also been the Head of Education and Public Programs at YARAT, Baku, Azerbaijan; Founding Curator at Alaan Art Space, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; and Curator of Public Programmes at Tate Modern, London.

Sara has written for numerous artist monographs, books, catalogues and publications, and is the West and Central Asia Desk Editor for ArtAsiaPacific magazine. In 2016, she was the recipient of the 11th ArtTable New Leadership Award for Women in the Arts, and in 2017 was honoured by Deutsche Bank and Apollo as one of “40 under 40” global art specialists. Sara holds a BA (hons) in English Literature and History of Art, and an MA in 20th Century Art History and Theory from Goldsmiths College, University of London. She also pursued studies towards her PhD at the Royal College of Art, London.