ASHA IMAN VEAL
Curator & Arts Professor
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (USA)
Asha Iman Veal is a curator for globally collaborative exhibitions of contemporary art, focused on conceptual photography and moving-image, cross-diasporic themes, and intercultural dialogues through methodologies of art education. Veal is a professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She lives and works between Paris, France and Chicago, Illinois.
Asha Iman’s recent exhibitions include: Black Creativity at the Museum of Science & Industry (Chicago 2025); Everyone Wants to Know More / Beyond the Realm of Fantasy at the MSU Broad Museum by Zaha Hadid (Michigan 2024); LOVE: Still Not the Lesser at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago 2023); Beautiful Diaspora / You Are Not the Lesser Part at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago 2022); RAISIN (vol1) at the Chicago Architecture Biennial (Chicago 2022); Martine Gutierrez at the Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago 2021); Dream at Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago 2021); The Tokyo Show: Black & Brown Are Beautiful at the Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago 2019); and more.
Veal regularly serves as a guest critic and jury reviewer for awards and residencies, including the American Academy in Rome/Terra Foundation Affiliated Fellowship, Artadia Awards, Austin Texas Public Arts Jury, Belfast Photo Festival, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, Denver Month of Photography, Earth Photo UK, East African Photo Awards, FILTER Photography Festival, FORMAT Photo Festival UK, FotoFest Houston, HARPO Foundation, Hyde Park Art Center, LensCulture Critics Choice Awards, Los Angeles Center of Photography, Photographic Resource Center, Rencontres Arles France, Rhode Island School of Design, University of Chicago Arts + Public Life, U of C Department of Visual Arts, Visual Studies Workshop NY, World Press Photo Netherlands, and more.
She’s visited as an invited lecturer at institutions including GRAIN Projects UK, Humanity In Action – Netherlands, Istituto Italiano Cultura Chicago, Pakhuis de Zwijger Amsterdam Netherlands, San Diego State University, Stockholm University Department of Culture and Aesthetics, and more. She contributed to the recent texts: Jess T. Dugan & Charlotte Cotton: Love Pictures (2026 Radius Books), Diasporas are the Landscape (2025 Visual Studies Workshop), Here, There: New Perspectives on the Collection (2025 Illinois State Museum).
Veal is a board member of Filter Photo in Chicago.
(BA New York University, Gallatin School of Individualized Study. MFA The New School. MA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. PhD The University of London Institute in Paris, in process)
Spoken Languages: English
Website: https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/asha-iman-veal