Rashid Rana, Dean at BNU MD-SVAD, is South Asia’s leading visual artist. Upon his continuous success in the creative sector, the President of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan – Dr. Arif Alvi, has bestowed him with the prestigious award of Sitara-e-Imtiaz.

The investiture ceremony was held on Wednesday, March 23, 2022 at Aiwan-e-Sadr, the President House, in Islamabad.

Rana, while occupying multiple simultaneous profiles, converges and mediates between artist, curator, academic and visionary with a common thread of an unfixed and non-prescriptive view of geography and identity. He states ‘My art-making, exhibition-making and curriculum-making overlap and converge. To me, these different practices are all forms of production.’

Distinct for his ideas, imagery and pictorial strategies, Rashid Rana has worked in dramatically different modes, such as paintings, stainless steel sculptures, video installation, photo-sculptures and photo mosaics. He has shown extensively at various public and private institutions all over the world including Singapore Art Museum, Hong Kong Art Center, Musée Guimet in Paris, Fotomuseum in Winterthur and Whitechapel Gallery in London amongst others. His works are in many private and public collections including Metropolitan Museum New York and British Museum London.

Rana, part of BNU MD-SVAD’s founding faculty, has played a pivotal role in designing the curriculum structure of the programs offered at SVAD. It would not be an exaggeration to say that BNU has been the highlight of contemporary art scene of Pakistan in the last decade. Major trends in the contemporary art such as New Media Art in Pakistan have emerged from BNU and Rashid Rana has had a significant role to play in it.

Rana is also a recipient of the prestigious 2017 Asia Art Award presented by the Asia Society, and was awarded International Artist of the Year by South Asian Visual Arts Collective Canada in 2003.