Liaqat Rasul

Liaqat Rasul (b. 1974) is a gay, Welsh, dyslexic Pakistani artist based in London. Trained in fashion at the University of Derby, Rasul spent a formative year working and studying in New Delhi, India, before Liberty’s in Regent Street purchased his graduating collection. He went on to run his womenswear label, Ghulam Sakina, for ten years, before shifting into the visual arts in 2015.

Working across collage, sculpture, and installation, Rasul has developed a distinctive practice centred on his mobile faces series, tactile assemblages made from everyday and found materials. His works are at once cartographic and personal, charting stories of mental health, multicultural identity, and community resilience. Emphasising the analogue and handmade, his practice embraces vulnerability as a strength, opening spaces for kindness, interdependence, and care.

Rasul’s work has been shown nationally and internationally, including the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition (2021), the British Textile Biennial (2023), and major group exhibitions such as Patterns of the Past (Grosvenor Gallery, 2021) and Fragments of Our Time (Whitaker Museum, 2023). His commissions include Meharbani for Hospital Rooms at Hauser & Wirth (2022), 0808 2000 247 for Refuge at the National Glass Centre (2024), and Phan – Rice Water (WIP, 2025), a memorial work on the Bengal Famine commissioned with Wrexham Museum and supported by Art Fund. In 2024, Tŷ Pawb in Wrexham presented Nau, Nau, Doh, Chaar, his first major solo exhibition and retrospective, which received coverage in The Guardian, World of Interiors, and The Wick.

His works are held in the Crafts Council Collection as well as private collections in the UK and India.

Rasul’s practice places him in the lineage of artists who use personal and collective histories to interrogate identity, belonging, and memory—his assemblages echo the deeply autobiographical yet socially resonant practices of artists such as Tracey Emin and Lubaina Himid, while remaining grounded in his own hybrid heritage and lived experiences.