Introducing Keith Khan

Wednesday 29 March 2023 6:00 - 7:30pm (online)

Booking is essential as places are limited.

We will be in contact, prior to the event, with the zoom URL required to access the event.

Join us as Creative Networks and LEEDS 2023 welcome Keith Khan to chat about his work, his background, insight into his career journey and the progress of his work with LEEDS 2023.

Creative Networks is Leeds Arts University’s major professional events programme with talks from high profile speakers from across the creative industries who entertain, challenge and inspire.

As part of My LEEDS 2023, a major community-led LEEDS 2023 project, Keith Khan is working closely with communities across Leeds to develop unique artworks for all 33 wards.

Keith Khan makes performances, animation film, drawing and textiles. Born in London, of Indo-Caribbean heritage, his career began designing carnival in Trinidad and the UK. He links his layered identities’: from his families’ movements within the colonial indentured system; his ancestral links to India; being raised in diverse London; through to contemporary phenomenon relating to cultural confusion; resulting in projects highly personal projects, often presented in different locations and for an audience as diverse as himself.

His practice within drawings and animations are based on working with universal themes, and feature a parred down symbols and ciphers drawn from the world around us, in an eclectic way. Elements are derived from emojis, and pop culture and Chittara (Karnataka) and Taino (Caribbean) art are meshed together to create fresh images that are sometimes animated, to embody a personalty. He juxtaposes sophisticated two dimensional structures, in three dimensional space. The work is normally presented in a limited or reduced palette. The latest pieces are shamanic, with vibrating gods and goddesses bristling with spirituality and life.