Aqsa Arif (she/her) is a Scottish-Pakistani artist and filmmaker based in Glasgow, Scotland. She incorporates moving image, photography, printmaking and poetry to construct installations in which she explores themes of dual heritage, migration and cultural dissonance. Her practice is inspired by narrative structures built within folklore, mythology and cinematic spaces, exploring this through her own dual identity to reclaim and re-imagine the pre/post-colonial world.
Her work has been exhibited widely across the UK, including at Edinburgh Printmakers, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow, Southwark Park Galleries, G39, and Site Gallery. She has been selected for residencies at Cove Park, Street Level Photoworks, Hospitalfield, Jupiter Artland and The British School at Rome.
Arif’s work has been recognised through a number of awards and nominations. In 2023, she received the Platform: Early Career Artist Award and the RSA Morton Award, and was nominated for Jerwood Survey III, which toured nationally from 2024–25. Her film Spicy Pink Tea was selected for BAFTA-qualifying festivals, winning Best Dance Film at Aesthetica and receiving a nomination for the Young Scottish Filmmaker prize at Glasgow Short Film Festival 2023.
In 2022, Arif was awarded the 20/20 residency by UAL’s Decolonising Arts Institute, resulting in her first solo exhibition Anam Ki Almari (The Trophy Cupboard) and the acquisition of her work across 20 UK public collections. Her film Mountain of Light was acquired by Glasgow Museums and is now on permanent display at the Riverside Museum.
Receiving the RSA Morton Award became a catalyst for a period of deep research, experimentation and exploration within my practice. The flexibility of the funding, being unrestricted and not bound to specific project outcomes or timelines, was invaluable. It allowed me to move through the research and making process with openness, following unexpected paths and responding to ideas as they emerged rather than working towards a predetermined endpoint.
With the support of the RSA Morton Award, I was able to build an expansive body of research, experiments and new work. I am now continuing to develop these materials and ideas into a more ambitious long-form fictional speculative moving image work, extending the questions that emerged through the award.
