Incorporating fine ink drawings and decorative mark making with washes, stains and accumulations of color pigment, I use paint and a variety of papers to develop exuberant psychosomatic surfaces. My compositions are site-sensitive, presenting multiple sides and existing in pedestrian space. I lean into the productive enigma of taking an image into the sculptural and I love playing with the definition of what a painting can be by incorporating sensibilities from drawing, textile, and sculpture. Informed by textile histories and methodologies, such as batik and kantha embroidery, my work also investigates textiles through the medium of painting. I am drawn to symbols and motifs related to the politics and aesthetics of heritage and I indulge my personal fascination with the cultural significances and tactility of texture, pattern, and color. The processes and forms I reference are sourced from my growing index of personal and historical objects. Through this idiosyncratic research my work deals with ideas of desire, individualism, opportunity, competition, and alienation. The decorative is a field of art tied to systems of heritage and I am excited by its subversive potential; my works celebrate ornament, particularly that of South Asia. I playfully present an idea of a synthetic personhood, where objects are animated and shaped by their perpetual search for belonging and are positioned in relation to ongoing colonial, global, and immigrant histories.
Hasan (born 1987, NYC) received her B.A. from Oberlin College in 2009 and her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2013, where she won the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Painting. In 2010, she was awarded the Terna Prize Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome and in 2025 she was an artist-in-residence in the Winter TNT Residency hosted by Transmitter and Tiger Strike Asteroid Galleries in NYC. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Kristen Lorello Gallery, NYC, Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, NYC, Center for Book Arts, NYC, The Stedelijk Museum, Den Bosch, The Netherlands, Deitch Projects, NYC, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY, the 2022 New England Triennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Fruitlands Museum and at BRIC Arts and Media in Downtown Brooklyn in Spring of 2023 among others. Recent two-person and solo exhibitions have been shown at The Old Stone House of Brooklyn, NY, Main Window, Dumbo with Deanna Evans Projects, NYC, and Stowaway Gallery, Los Angeles, CA all in 2025. Meena has taught Painting at Rutgers University - Newark, Pratt Institute's Painting MFA program, the School of Visual Arts at Boston University and Studio in a School, NYC. She is currently the Graduate Program Director and Associate Professor in Painting at RISD, Providence. She is also a co-director of the artist and curator run space Transmitter Gallery and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
TNT Residency Interview with Transmitter Gallery
The Faraway Nearby 2025: Artists in Conversation, Anjuli Rathod and Meena Hasan
Brooklyn Paper: Art installation at the Old Stone House connects Battle of Brooklyn to British colonization in India
Main Window Dumbo / Deanna Evans Projects
PS 122 The Spiritual is Political
'When I Am Empty Please Dispose of Me Properly' at BRIC Arts is a group exhibition featuring the work of seven artists who explore the dominant myths of the American dream that govern and shape our personal narratives.
THE NEW YORK TIMES: ART WE SAW THIS SUMMER - PAINTING AS IS |BY MARTHA SCHWENDENER
Correspondence Archive #21. Meena Hasan & Sharmistha Ray
Epicenter NYC Featured Artist: Meena Hasan
Something Curated | Contemporary Artists Using Textiles to Interrogate Histories of Colonialism
Hyperallergic | Echoes of Identity Across the Work of Two Asian American Artists
Greenpointers | Thursday Spotlight: Meena Hasan and "Post-Colonial Legacy"
Whitehot Magazine | In Conversation with Meena Hasan & Tommy Kha
Art Stockings: Dialogues on Art, Gender and Cultural Theory, Digital Lecture, Smith College
Coeval Magazine Interview with Meena Hasan
OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Meena Hasan
SPREAD with Marissa Bluestone, Sophie Grant, Meena Hasan and Miriam Hitchcock, Left Field Gallery, San Luis Obispo CA
Meena Hasan and Cal Siegel: wallflower frieze, 6BASE, Bronx, NY
Art Blog: Telling Tales – Sheherzade’s Gift at Twelve Gates Arts
Sheherzade's Gift curated by Jaishri Abichandani at Twelve Gates Arts, 10/20-11/29
|http://http://twelvegatesarts.org/exhibitions/sheherzadesgift|
Stages, organized by Matt Bollinger at Zürcher Gallery
|http://http://www.galeriezurcher.com/spip.php?page=article&id_article=1342|
Sheherzade's Gift curated by Jaishri Abichandani at the Center for Book Arts 7/13-9/24
Sheherzade's Gift Exhibition, curated by Jaishri Abichandani, Sept 2015
http://localproject.org/2015/08/sheherzades-gift-exhibition-sept-3rd/
Group Show 826NYC Exhibition & Auction, David Zwirner Gallery, NY, NY 2015
http://www.davidzwirner.com/exhibition/826nyc-auction/
Superfund Storytellers, Dialogues in the Visual Arts Panel at the Brooklyn Public Library. 10/8/2014
Are We Already Gone? FlickerLab Exhibition Curated by Negin Moss. 9/21/2014
CURRENT: Gowanus Group Show at Gowanus Loft, curated by Benjamin Sutton. 05/14/2014
Click to view CURRENT: Gowanus Studio Visit with Meena Hasan
Gowanus Open Studios 10/2013
Bosch Young Talent Show 2013 Den Bosch, The Netherlands 09/2013
Una residenza d’artista per Meena Hasan (Connectivity 02)
An article posted on the Premio Terna website commenting on the residency at the American Academy. To view, please go to: http://www.premioterna.it/#news/news/detail/una-residenza-dartista-per-meena-hasan-connectivity-02
Premio Terna 02
Awarded third place in the international art competition titled Premio Terna. 02 The prize includes a 3-month residency at the American Academy in Rome, a group show in Rome and Shanghai and publication in Premio Terna's catalogues.
visit http://www.premioterna.it/en/new/the-winners-of-the-terna-prize-02-announced .com
and/or TheWinners for more information
