Saud Baloch
My practice explores how bodies, materials and landscapes carry the traces of political, environmental and social pressures over time. Working across sculpture, drawing, installation, sound and artists' moving image, I investigate how lived experience becomes embedded in matter and how sustained acts of making, observation and material enquiry can reveal overlooked histories.
Rooted in my experience of growing up in Nushki, Balochistan, Pakistan, and informed by living and working in the United Kingdom since 2016, my work considers landscape not as a backdrop but as an active witness to memory, power and transformation. Rather than representing events directly, I am interested in how their effects accumulate through bodies, places and materials, revealing relationships between people, landscapes and systems of control.
Making is central to the way I think. Time, labour and experimentation are integral to my process, allowing meaning to emerge through sustained engagement with materials. My recent work brings together sculpture, sound and artists' moving image to create immersive installations that invite reflection on memory, absence and the enduring relationship between body, place and power.
Lived Experience
I was born in Nushki, Balochistan, Pakistan, and have lived and worked in the United Kingdom since 2016. My practice explores how bodies, materials and landscapes carry the traces of political, environmental and social pressures over time. Working across sculpture, drawing, installation, sound and artists' moving image, I investigate how lived experience becomes embedded in matter and how sustained acts of making, observation and material enquiry can reveal overlooked histories. Rooted in the landscapes of Balochistan and informed by my experience of living between Pakistan and the UK, my work examines the relationship between memory, place and materiality, considering how landscapes act as witnesses to both personal and collective histories.
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
Join Axis
We support artists
Funding, visibility, connection and practical help.
Membership includes £15 million of Public Liability Insurance!