Hi! I am Nageen Shaikh. I am a developmental and line editor and a writing consultant. I support individuals, arts, and culture organizations by shaping, improving, and fine-tuning their publications, catalogs, educational papers, stories, blogs, and other formats.

By training, I am also an art historian, critic, and industrial designer. I have previously worked with the Guggenheim Museum, British Council, Paul W. Zuccaire art gallery, Gulgee Museum, and Karachi Biennale Trust.

One of my most popular publications include “Inside The Wondrous Studios of Three Pakistani Artists,” published in Hyperallergic. The profound experience of encountering South Asian masterworks shaped another of my favorite writings about transnational art spectacles entitled “The Rewards and Pitfalls of Survey Exhibitions,” written for The Karachi Collective. More of my critical and research-based writing can be found here.

Research excites me. I am curatorially curious and fascinated by networks that transform materials and art processes. My research queries notions of materiality and spatial conditions that affect artworks as they emerge before, during, and after the layered processes of artmaking within artists studios, workshops, economies, and histories. Check out my peer-reviewed research paper entitled “Studio as Mediator: The Geographical Ceramics of Shazia Zuberi”.

I love teaching. Learning from my research, I developed and taught courses and readings in Japanese art history and fashion design, South Asian illuminated manuscripts, connections between art and science, and modern and contemporary art by South Asian artists for undergraduate institutions. Check out my most recent review published by Hyperallergic for Alicia Volk’s fantastic new book entitled In The Shadow of Empire: Art in Occupied Japan.

I am a devoted lover of nature, athletics, languages, and books. I particularly gravitate toward sci-fi, mystery, thriller, horror, and fantasy. Some of my favorite novels include the Ryhope Wood series by Robert Holdstock, Dan Simmon’s The Hyperion Cantos, works by Siri Hustvedt, Lydia Davis, Liu Cixin, Fritz Leiber, Olga Tokarczuk, and Eleanor Catton. My review for R. F. Kuang’s fabulous novel Babel: A Necessity of Violence was published by Dawn News. I passionately read across genres including works by Gaston Bachelard, Niilofur Farrukh, Pamela H. Smith, Sonal Khullar, and Robert Macfarlane. I recommend these books and authors to all avid readers.

I also conduct online writing sessions. You can find workshop schedules (and testimonials), and the books I am reading at present on my Instagram @pressedpulpandink.

I have an MA in Art History and Criticism from The State University of New York at Stony Brook where I was a Fulbright Scholar. I received my BD in Industrial Design from the University of Karachi. I was also a recipient of the Mahvash and Jahangir Siddiqui Foundation Scholarship for a summer course in Entrepreneurship and Economic Enterprise at The National University of Singapore.

Here’s how to pronounce my name: Na (as in nut) g (as in gray) een (as in eel)