Metabolic Experiences: Interview with Asad Raza

Ask Asad Raza how he refers to himself and his reply is markedly opaque: “I’m not really anything, but I do everything, depending on what needs to be done.” Born in 1974 in Buffalo, New York, to Pakistani immigrants, Raza is a graduate of John Hopkins University’s literature department and New York University’s film program. His practice is predicated on the conversations between the “cultivators”—collaborators whom Raza engages for his projects—and the visitors to the architectural environments or mise-en-scènes that he constructs. By provoking “metabolic” and live exchanges between visitors, facilitators, and the spaces that they occupy, Raza seeks to challenge the conventions of how we interact with or define art. 

• Pakistan
• USA