Bio 
Sophia Balagamwala is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Karachi. Grounded in archives and museum collections, her practice merges real and fabricated events to explore entanglements between colonial histories, national narratives and personal histories in South Asia.
Balagamwala has a BA from the University of Toronto (2010) and an MFA from Cornell University (2014). She has previously worked as the Lead Curator of the National History Museum in Lahore, and is currently an advisor for the Citizens Archive of Pakistan (CAP).
Balagamwala curates a collection of local artist publications under the Kurachee Reading Room, housed previously at the COMO Museum in Lahore, (2021-2022), and cur
Artist Statement | The Perfect Gentleman
Her practice explores the intersectional space in which history, fiction and nonsense converge. Her most recent works are interested in investigating the representations in colonial era portratiture and objects
I am interested in how stories are constructed, in particular, the myths of national heroes and national histories. My work explores the space where the history meets fiction and nonsense. This fictional object claims to have been gifted to the wife of Ghulam Mohyuddin. The piece is inspired objects currently living in the Fakir Khana museum, fabricated stories and missing histories.
Sophia Balagamwala (b. 1987, Pakistan) lives and works in Karachi. Balagamwala received a BA from the University of Toronto (2010) and an MFA from Cornell University (2014). Balagamwala’s work lives in the space where history meets nonsense and fiction. Her practice explores myths of national heroes and histories, and how these histories become exaggerated, simplified and monumentalized. The subjects of her portraits, sometimes men sometimes beasts but always decorated and important, struggle with their identities and responsibilities. Stuck in colonial formats, they inhabit a gaudy and tragic space between their colonial past and their present.
Artist Statement | Legacies of Crossings
Balagamwala’s practice explores the intersectional space in which history, fiction and nonsense converge. Her recent works look at gestures grand and small, and explore the legacies of arbitrary decisions made about peoples, lands and objects.
