​

Aqsa Arif is an award-winning Scottish-Pakistani artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow. She incorporates film, printmaking, photography and poetry to construct installations in which she explores themes of dual heritage, migration and cultural dissonance. Her practice is deeply inspired by narrative structures built within folklore, mythology and cinematic spaces, exploring this through her own dual identity to reclaim and re-imagine the pre/post-colonial world.

​

Her film Spicy Pink Tea has been selected for BAFTA qualifying festivals and won Best Dance Film at Aesthetica Film Festival and was nominated for the Young Scottish Filmmaker prize in Glasgow Short Film Festival. Arif was selected to undertake the 20/20 residency by UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute: a 15-month residency at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum leading to her first solo exhibition, Anam Ki Almari (The Trophy Cupboard) and 20 new permanent acquisitions in 20 UK public art collections.

​

In 2023, she was awarded the Platform: Early Career Artist Award as well as the RSA Morton Award. She has also been nominated for the major national touring exhibition, Jerwood Survey III, launching at Southwark Park Galleries in March 2024 and touring in Cardiff, Sheffield and Edinburgh.