SAUD BALOCH
Biography
I am an artist born in Nushki, Balochistan, Pakistan, currently based in the UK. My practice explores how bodies and landscapes absorb political pressure, memory, and time through material and form. Working across sculpture, drawing, and installation, I use earth-based materials and durational processes to consider displacement, extraction, and enforced silence.
I studied Fine Art at Balochistan University, completed a BFA with Distinction at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore, and an MA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2025). My work has been exhibited internationally, including at Sanat Gallery, Karachi, and Hartlepool Art Gallery, and is held in the collection of Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA). I have been supported by organisations such as Arts Council England and BALTIC, and have exhibited regularly in the UK and Pakistan since 2016.
Artist Statement
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My practice explores how bodies and landscapes absorb political pressure, memory, and time through material and form. Working across sculpture, drawing, and installation, I investigate physical and metaphorical burdens shaped by displacement, extraction, and enforced silence. Rooted in Balochistan, Pakistan, my work treats place not as a backdrop but as an active force that registers through matter.
I work with materials such as clay, stone, soot, metal, and pen on paper—materials that hold residue, weight, and duration. Architecture, terrain, and the human figure often merge, reflecting how land is internalised and carried by the body. Drawing functions as a durational practice, where repetitive mark-making mirrors geological processes of accumulation and erosion, allowing meaning to emerge slowly through labour and time.
Across my work, I resist spectacle in favour of proximity, compression, and attention. Through material persistence and embodied processes, I consider how life continues under conditions of constraint, and how matter acts as a site of memory, endurance, and becoming.
CV
EDUCATION
2025 | Master of Arts in Sculpture | Royal College of Art (RCA), London, UK
Degree Show: Confined Narratives, RCA (June 2025)
2013 | National College of Arts (NCA) | Lahore, Pakistan
Degree Show, Zahoor ul Akhlaq Gallery, NCA
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2019 | Nowhere to Land | Pineapple Black, Middlesbrough, UK
2018 | Fool’s Gold | Sanat Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan
2017 | Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt | Hartlepool Art Gallery, UK
2016 | Under the Dust | Sanat Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2023 | Moment in Time | The Upside Space, India (Online)
2023 | Middlesbrough Art Weekender | Navigator North, Middlesbrough, UK
2021 | MIMA Collection | Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), UK
2018 | The Perfect Gentlemen | Project Art Divvy & Rossi & Rossi, London, UK
2018 | I, Too, Am a Part of this History | Fakir Khana Museum / Lahore Biennale, Pakistan
2014 | Anomalous | Sanat Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan
RESIDENCIES & AWARDS
2021 | Kooshk Residency | Tehran, Iran (Awarded; postponed due to closure)
2020 | Creative Space Residency | BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, UK
2016 | Emerging Artists’ Bursary | Stellar Projects / Navigator North, Middlesbrough, UK
2014 | Artist Residency | Sanat Initiative, Karachi, Pakistan
PROFESSIONAL ENGAGEMENT
Talks & Research
2023 | Participant, AHRC-funded Research Network Towards a Socio-Somatic History of the Troubles | Teesside
University, Belfast & Bogside Museums, UK
2023 | Participant, BA/Leverhulme Project Desert Disorders | Northumbria University, UK
Teaching & Jury
2023 | Juror, MA Visual Arts | National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan
2014 – 2016 | Visiting Lecturer in Sculpture | National College of Arts, Lahore, Pakistan
2018 – 2023 | Life Drawing Instructor | Various institutions (Hartlepool, Saabat, Base Camp, Navigator North), UK
Community Engagement
2017 | Facilitator, Building Bridges Creative Writing Workshop | Hartlepool Art Gallery, UK
COLLECTIONS
Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (MIMA), UK
