Kishwar Rizvi

Calligraphy and miniature painting have emerged in the past two decades in Pakistan as two sides of a polarized debate on authenticity. Kishwar Rizvi will explore the way in which young artists in Pakistan, and likewise in the Middle East, ‘construct' a history of Islamic art on their own terms by owning and critiquing their cultural heritage through calligraphy and the miniature.

Kishwar Rizvi is assistant professor of art history at Barnard College. She received her Ph.D in architecture from MIT, has taught at the College of the Holy Cross and Yale University, and focuses her research interests on architectural history, Islamic art, and Iranian studies.