Haseeb Ahmed

Haseeb Ahmed (b. 1985) lives and works in Brussels, Belgium. 

Over the last 10 years, Haseeb Ahmed has structured his research-based artistic practice around the fluid dynamics of wind and water. His work, which combines objects, installations, and films, is often collaborative and draws from the hard sciences, blending art and aeronautics, myth and technology to create new narratives. With his experimental and often speculative approach, Ahmed looks at natural phenomena and the cultural connotations they carry - throughout history, and in light of their present-day implications in a shifting landscape.

Ahmed received his Masters in Visual Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, US) after completing a Bachelor of Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (US)  in sculpture and architecture. As a researcher at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL), Ahmed won the Designers and Artists 4 Genomics Award with his work The Fishbone Chapel. He obtained his PHD in Practice-Based Art in 2018 from the University of Antwerp (BE). 

His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including M HKA - Museum of Contemporary Art (Antwerp, BE); von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics (Sint-Genesius-Rode, BE); Keller Gallery, MIT (Cambridge, US); and the Museum Bärengasse (Zurich, CH). He has participated in group exhibitions at the MCA - Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, US); the Centre for Fine Arts - Bozar (Brussels, BE); FRONT Triennial (Cleveland, US); Frestas - Trienal de Artes (São Paulo, BR); Digital Art Festival Taipei (TW); the Gothenburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art (SE), and many others. In 2024, he was commissioned to create a large-scale installation, Stock Weather III, for the 15th Gwangju Biennale (Gwangju, KR). 

Alongside his artistic career, Ahmed maintains collaborative research practices, regularly participating in residencies and contributing to artistic and academic publications such as Afterall Journal, Spike Art Magazine, H ART Magazine, and more. In 2024, he was awarded the Synergies grant by the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia, to develop his collaborative research project Pantha Rhei on the Rhine.