Welcome HIAP’s New Residency Assistant: Dua Rizvi

The HIAP team is joined by a new Residency Assistant, Dua Rizvi in January 2026.

“I was drawn to HIAP because of its commitment to facilitating collaborations that cross disciplines and borders. I believe art becomes most meaningful when it is shared and when barriers to access and participation are reduced,” Rizvi says.

Dua Rizvi is a visual artist and writer from Lahore, Pakistan, currently based in Helsinki. She has studied fine arts at the National College of Arts in Lahore and the Academy of Fine Arts in Helsinki. Working across drawing, print and publishing, and moving image in her practice, she uses found and original media with fragments of autofiction. In her work, she reflects on memory, subjectivity, literal and metaphysical notions of distance as well as the ambivalence of language.

Her work has been shown at numerous international venues since 2010, notably as part of projects exploring migration, memory, and interculturality. Alongside her artistic practice, Rizvi has been a regular contributor to art and culture magazines, journals, and anthologies, having written extensively in English on contemporary art, the arts of the Islamic world, travel, language, and the relationship between text and image. She currently serves on the editorial advisory board of Image Journal and has contributed essays in recent years to Encounters: The Art of Interfaith Dialogue (Brepols), the Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception (De Gruyter), The Aleph Review, and Selvedge Magazine.

“Having spent the last two years studying and working in Helsinki’s art scene, I’ve come to value how organisations like HIAP nurture artistic practice through dialogue and community. Being part of this process—welcoming artists, supporting their projects, and helping them feel at home—resonates deeply with how I see art as relational and regenerative,” she adds.

Join us in welcoming Dua to the team!

Photo: Maija Lindström / HIAP