Speak Sing Shout: We, Too, Sing America is Pakistani American artist Sarah K. Khan’s latest ceramic series, exploring migration, food, femininity, and power. Her eight porcelain vessels, inspired by Indian Ocean spices and marked with pre-colonial plant names, reclaim overlooked histories of trade and cultural knowledge. Walking through the exhibition, I was struck by how everyday objects become sites of memory and resistance, and how Khan’s layered, spice-infused prints create an immersive, sensorial experience. Historical and contemporary women appear as figures of strength, wielding “weapons of mass creation,” leaving viewers reflecting on identity, power, and the multitudes within us.
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Divya Gangwani: Walking through your exhibition felt incredible; there was such a strong presence in the room. From the variety of media to the way everything was arranged, it all felt deeply intentional. When I saw your newest eight-piece ceramic set at the center, I was struck by how these vessels, objects that could easily belong in my own home, were now displayed and adorned with beautiful prints that honor their heritage. I’m used to seeing a metal handi (round vessel) on my family’s table filled with rice, so seeing it reimagined in this way felt both strange and inspiring. Re-creating these everyday vessels, staples in so many South Asian households, and presenting them in this context adds a powerful layer of meaning that speaks to South Asian identity. What inspired this body of work?
Sarah K. Khan: What might we become when viewed through the lens of race and ethnicity? That was the central question posed by Stanford and Zócalo—one that I address in my presentation both directly and indirectly. When I began my work, I entered Food Studies before the field had fully taken shape. I completed my undergraduate degree in Middle Eastern History, followed by a dual Master’s in Public Health and Nutrition, and then a PhD in Botany because it offered a pathway to studying plants. In botany, you learn the Latin names of plants, and within that discipline, plants are described with terms such as indigenous, non-indigenous, cultivated, non-cultivated, naturalized, non-naturalized, or invasive. There is an entire parallel vocabulary we use for plants—one that, in many ways, we also map onto people.
And it’s funny because I get so ornery about it. I try to reflect and ask myself, why am I so upset? Why does that enrage me? It still does. You see, the plant naming system really upsets me because if everything starts with Latin and Greek, we’re denying many other world cultures, where not everything began that way. No shade to Latin or Greek, or to their rich histories, but what about everything we lose when we impose one system of naming at the exclusion of others? So for this proposal, I said, let me take these eight plants: black pepper, cinnamon, clove, frankincense, myrrh, nutmeg, orange blossom, and rose. These all have origins in the Global South, but you’d think cinnamon only existed in Danish baked goods; it actually comes from South Asia, from Sri Lanka and southern India. I wanted to encapsulate those plants on a vessel. That’s the connection: representing each plant with one or two visual references I found in archives, and including all the names. They’re just beautiful.
DG: I can see the connections between your knowledge of spices, their ecology, and how this informs your art. Did your PhD research in botany inspire you to create physical art pieces or to enter the fine arts world? Have you always considered yourself a creative person?
SK: It’s such a layered thing, at least for me. I’m not one of those people who knew what I wanted to do. My parents and my larger Pakistani community in the northeast had expectations of us, spoken and unspoken. So it was made very clear what was valued. And for a while I fell into that, but instead of becoming an MD, I got a PhD in Botany, and I focused on alternative medicine. I often find myself on the edges and margins.
So you asked about botany and becoming a fine artist. All of my work informs everything I’ve studied. One of my real motivations as a college student was the question of Palestine. My father had gently told me that he too experienced the 1947 Partition, but I could not get many more details out of him. I remember watching him glued to our black-and-white TV screen every night in the early seventies, watching how East and West Pakistan played out. So when I was an undergrad, divestment from South Africa loomed large, and indigenous rights of Palestinians in the Middle East were a focus of study. In 1996, I ended up living in Israel and Palestine for my joint Master’s work. While collecting data on infant eating practices among a Bedouin population, I befriended a Bedouin woman whose family refused to leave their land. They lived in makeshift houses with intermittent water and electricity, and she was the matriarch.
I’d spend weekends with them, and I insisted on sleeping under the stars. She had goats, made cheese, sold it, and that was her money. I loved the desert; it was barren to me, and I didn’t know how to read the landscape, but she did. I came back, finished my degrees. I made an unconscious decision: “do not become a lab scientist because it is too solitary” and I marched up to the New York Botanical Garden. And did a PhD in Botany (Ayurveda and TCM) because I wanted to travel, learn languages, eat, and have someone else pay for it!
So the idea that human rights are tied to land and the fact that plants are part of my work is no coincidence. Indigenous cultures wouldn’t exist without access to land as a fundamental right. This is a theme in my work, alongside food culture, human rights, access to land, and taste. Migrations of people, plants, and ideas are at the core. And in the process, I am compelled to poke at disciplines that restrict us, like botany.
DG: Your exhibition features a series of layered prints, some accompanied by ceramic objects and even infused with real spices embedded in the paper. These works focus on migrant women, highlighting three historical figures in particular. Who are these three women? And given your research on colonial history and your exploration of historical narratives, I would like you to walk us through your process of finding and researching them. When did you first begin encountering them in your practice?
SK: I came across The Book of Delights, and they’re all of these attendants. Historically, they were a cosmopolitan group of women or femmes, and so I started thinking of the African, Arab, and Asian ocean world. I was thinking of East Africa. I was thinking of Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, northern Arab states, the Emirates, and then the west coast of India.
My mother’s name is Bilqis, and I was like, well, then I have to start with Queen Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba. Then I would search for imagery of her and then make a conglomerate picture of her. And then I’d say, okay, she’s East African in Yemen. So what are the stories? What are the mythologies? What is the visual, abstract imagery that she might have grown up with or been around? And then I use that in the work in terms of color—like Queen of Sheba, as purple is associated with royalty, I think I have her as purple in some way. And then, of course, she has my mother’s name, and my mother is a queen in and of herself.
Then there’s Razia Sultan, the historically well-known leader. And there’s great history about her: she went by the name of Sultan (male), not Sultana (female). Her mother was an elite Turkish woman. Her father was enslaved, but he rose through the ranks and appointed her as their heir apparent. There was coinage made after her. So the coinage becomes a pattern in my work.
And then Abebach. This time last year, I was on my way to Paris for a Women in Translation Conference, spearheaded by Dr. Deborah Willis at NYU, who has been a big supporter of my work. One of the women in that group is a woman of Ethiopian descent named Maza Mengistu, and she’s written this beautiful book called The Shadow King, which is about Italians fighting fascism in the 1930s and 1940s in Ethiopia. She has a paragraph in the book about all of these amazing women freedom fighters of the time period. There is this one woman from the 1930s—her name is Abebach, and there are these beautiful black and white photos of her with a rifle and a Luger. And she’s saying, “We must take up arms. We must fight Italian fascism.”
I’m drawing a direct parallel to contemporary society, exploring how we take up arms both literally and metaphorically.
DG: It’s so refreshing to see our history represented through the female gaze, and it carries such power. One of your prints is surrounded by ceramic Lugers, and during the walk through I recall you saying, “How does it feel now that a brown or black woman is holding a gun up to you?” This piece is incredibly charged, bridging history and present realities. Can you talk about the thought process behind creating these Lugers and what you wanted viewers to take away from this work?
SK: You know, we talk about the right to bear arms, but who truly has that right, and who actually bears the consequences of using those arms to defend, versus to provoke? I’m very conflicted about it all, but this is a historical fact. What does it mean to have a weapon pointed at you, and who is doing the pointing? I think that’s the crux of it. Depending on who is holding the gun, who is protected, and who is not, what does that really mean? I want us to sit with that uncomfortableness and those questions. And I have more questions to ask and reflect on, which is why I like being an artist.
DG: I agree—I would say one of the best qualities and privileges of being creative is to be able to ask these questions and stay curious. As an artist myself, I try to do the same when making my own work. Most of my concepts for my past work have begun with a question, whether that be a simple question of how I am feeling in the moment, or, similarly to you, looking into South Asia’s colonial history.
SK: What’s your trajectory, Divya? What are you doing? What makes your heart go bumpity, bump?
DG: I went to school for photography, and most of my photo work revolves around my family. I work with familial archives a lot, and I try to represent how the women in the photos must have felt through mixed-media collages. Honestly, I haven’t worked in a long time. I’ve been using my creative energy elsewhere. In thinking of my own education, I found art school to be heavy, emotionally. I felt like I had to think about my work too deeply, to the point where I kind of lost interest in the physical making because I was focused on making sure the concept was worth it.
Seeing your work and your play with different materials and senses is incredibly inspiring to me. Your exhibition is so layered sensorially. It includes prints, ceramics, and video, and your prints are physically layered with spices. Why is this sensory experience so important to you, and how does it inform your work?
SK: Yeah, it’s such a good question. Food is not one thing. We don’t read food, we experience it. It’s multi-sensory and transdisciplinary. I learn more when I engage in more than one sense, visual, smell, rhythm, even sounds like the sizzling of onions or the simmering of a stew. Multi-sensory approaches create multiple ways for people to connect, depending on how they experience the world.
I never realized I was visual until I had to describe what I saw in my mind to my husband, who is an art historian. Together, we think about “sensiotics,” or the experience of art, not just reading it. Coming from South Asia, you see multi-sensory experiences in temples and mosques, incense, imagery, sounds. Bringing that richness to food, art, and community spaces is powerful.
DG: Thank you for sharing your time and insights. Your work speaks so powerfully, and it has left a profound and lasting impression on me personally. Before we close, is there a final thought or message you would like to share with your audience?
SK: I hope I leave them with a sense of their multitudes and layers and a desire to go out into the world and share them. It doesn’t have to be a show. I want to breathe confidence into all of us, that we are multitudes, that we are beautiful, that we are rich, migrant or not, and that we carry these multitudes within.
Speak Sing Shout: We, Too, Sing America is on view through December 23, 2025, at BRIC House, New York.
