Idris Khan
Idris Khan OBE (born 1978) is a British artist based in London. Khan's work draws from a diverse range of cultural sources including literature, history, art, music, and religion. He creates densely layered imagery that is both abstract and figurative and addresses narratives of history, cumulative experience and the metaphysical collapse of time into single moments. Early life and education Khan is a Muslim by origin. His father is from Pakistan and his English mother converted to Islam after meeting his father. Khan graduated in photography from the University of Derby in 2001, he studied for an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2004. Career Khan's photographs or scans originate from secondary source material – for instance, every page of the Qur'an, every Beethoven sonata, every William Turner postcard from Tate Britain, or every Bernd and Hilla Becher spherical gasholder. Khan's interest in Islam and layered imagery can be traced back to his upbringing: It was his father's idea that Khan – himself a non-practicing Muslim – photograph every page of the Qur'an. His work and process have been described as "experiments in compressed memories" and "all-encompassing composites." As Khan describes: "It is a challenge to not define