Asian-British curator and researcher whose research interests span art and politics in South Asia, Nada Raza has curated exhibitions across the UK and Dubai with the aim of sharing the South Asian experience with a larger audience.

Born in the UK, Raza studied critical writing and curatorial practice at Chelsea College of Art and Design, London. In 2012, she started working as an assistant curator at Tate Modern, and in 2016, as the research curator at Tate Research Centre: Asia. From 2018 onwards, she served as the founding artistic director of Ishara Art Foundation, Dubai. She also worked as the curatorial director at Alserkal, Dubai, from 2019 onwards.

Raza began her curatorial practice in 2005 with a group show of Pakistani artists at The Third Line Gallery, Dubai. She also assisted with the travelling exhibition, Lines of Control: Partition as a Productive Space (2010), which featured works by artists such as Bani Abidi, Anita Dube, Zarina Hashmi, Iftikhar Dadi and Gauri Gill. In 2014, Nada guest curated the Abraaj Capital Art Prize at Art Dubai.

In her role as assistant curator at the South Asia Acquisitions Committee at Tate, Raza worked on acquisitions, exhibitions and displays for the gallery and helped acquire works by key South Asian artists for the collection as well as developing the research and collections strategy. Among the shows she curated during the period included Bhupen Khakhar: You Can’t Please All (2016) and The Missing One (2016) for the Dhaka Art Summit and the Office for Contemporary Art, Norway. She also curated the online exhibition, A Picture Held Us Captive (2020), at Art Abu Dhabi.

In 2019, Raza curated a collaborative show at the Ishara Foundation, featuring works by Shilpa Gupta and Zarina Hashmi, exploring themes of belonging, migration and loss. She also curated Body Building (2019), which explored the aspirations, challenges and complexities of the built environment through archival images, street photographs and portraits by artists such as Ram Rahman, Madan Mahatta, Zahra Malkhani, Gigi Scaria, Dayanita Singh and Vivek Vilasini.

As of writing, Raza is pursuing her doctoral studies in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. She also serves as the director of Alserkal, Dubai.