Collecting Fingerprints: Baseera Khan at the Brooklyn Museum

Subtle and alluring, a brown eye gazes out from behind the mihrab motif at the center of a prayer rug. The gaze pierces the two-dimensional surface, revealing that this work, which has the appearance of a photograph, is actually a collage of images used to partially conceal the body of artist Baseera Khan. In this work, one in a series titled “Law of Antiquities” (2021–), Khan’s images digitally merge the artist’s figure with rare and fragile artifacts from the Broo