Iftikhar Dadi is the John H. Burris Professor and Chair of Cornell University’s Department of History of Art. He researches modern and contemporary art from a transnational perspective, emphasizing methodology and intellectual history and focusing on South and West Asia. Another research interest examines film and popular cultures of South Asia.
He has authored Lahore Cinema Between Realism and Fable (2022); Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia (2010), and edited Lahore Biennale 01 Reader (2022) and Anwar Jalal Shemza (2015). He has co-edited Climate Change and Cultural Practices in South Asia (2027); Lahore Biennale 02 Reader (2024); Art and Architecture of Migration and Discrimination: Turkey, Pakistan, and Their European Diasporas (2023); Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012); and Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading (2001). Co-curated exhibitions include Pop South Asia: Artistic Explorations in the Popular (2022–23) and Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2012–13).
As an artist, Iftikhar Dadi collaborates with Elizabeth Dadi to make work that explores questions of identity and borders, and the capacities of the informal urban realm in the Global South. They work in diverse mediums, including large-scale installations, often incorporating mass-produced objects, photography, sculpture, and illumination. Their work draws on the tropes of archaeology and media, and critically engages with Conceptual Art, Pop Art, and site-specificity.
