Born in London in 1975, Hassan Khan is an artist, musician, and writer. He is known for his complex and diverse art which includes music, performance, sound, video, sculpture, and text. After winning the Silver Lion at the 2017 Venice Biennale, Khan was appointed Professor of Fine Arts in 2018 at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main.

His works – some of which are grotesque, brutal, and intense – address crucial and urgent issues relating to human interaction or the rise of repression, violence, and hate in social media. Although Khan uses different media, his works have a common thread in their allusions, resonance, and interrelationships. For instance, he juxtaposes bizarrely inflated creatures with horrific videos of torture sessions or with sound installations that present a rhythm of clapping evocative of military parades and machine guns.

His art looks at what lurks beneath the surface, seduces and alienates, plays with our expectations, and leaves us puzzled. It can thus encourage us to find new ways of expressing our experiences within changing power structures.