Planning Your Thesis Submission | GRTP42

Varda Nisar (she/her) is a mother, daughter, and sister. She is also a doctoral candidate in Concordia’s Department of Art History and a Public Scholar (2022-23). Her work diverges in several direction, including art education and community outreach. While in Montreal, she has consistently tried to foreground the work of artists from Pakistan and South Asia. In 2021, she organized and convened a speaker series titled (Art+Micro)History: Contemporary Artistic Voices from the South, which drew attention to the specific concerns and artistic modes of resistance in Pakistan. In 2023, she co-curated a multi-venue exhibition, “re*  imagining / créer / building / faire / mapping / connaissance /…” with artists Rudi Aker, Pansee Atta, Amin Rehman, and Swapnaa Tamhane. She was a 2015-16 Arthink South Asia Fellow and worked with Spark Arts for Children as part of her secondment.

Her doctoral research focuses on the nexus between cultural production and military regimes in Pakistan and how museums have come to play a critical role in it.