Salima Hashmi is an artist, curator and contemporary art historian. Professor Hashmi was the founding Dean of the Mariam Dawood School of Visual Art and Design at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore. She was Professor of Fine Art at National College of Arts [NCA] Lahore and was also Principal of the College.
Salima Hashmi was part of Shoaib Hashmi’s ensemble of the 1970’s, which pioneered political and social satire in Pakistan Television. She is an accomplished theater and television actor. She is elder daughter of legendary Urdu poet Fiaz Ahmed Faiz.
Salima Hashmi has written extensively on the arts. Her book “Unveiling the Visible- Lives and Works of Women Artists of Pakistan” was published in 2002, and ‘Memories, Myths, Mutations – Contemporary Art of India and Pakistan’ co- authored with Yashodhara Dalmia for Oxford University Press, India in 2006. She has edited ‘The Eye Still Seeks – Contemporary Art of Pakistan for Penguin Books, India in 2014.
Salima Hashmi curated “Hanging Fire” an exhibition of Pakistani Contemporary Art for Asia Society Museum, New York in 2009, which was accompanied by an extensive catalogue.
She curated the critically acclaimed exhibition titled ‘This Night-Bitten Dawn’ hosted by Gujral Foundation and the Devi Art Foundation in Delhi, which opened on the occasion of the Delhi Art Fair, 2016. She has recently curated a group show of Indian and Pakistani artists ‘Pale Sentinels’ at Aicon Gallery, New York.
Government of Pakistan awarded her the President's Medal for Pride of Performance for Art Education in 1999.
The Australian Council of Art and Design Schools (ACUADS) nominated her as Inaugural International Fellow, for distinguished service to art and design education in 2011. She was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Bath Spa University in 2016. She was awarded with title of Professor Emeritus from BOG Beaconhouse National University on the occasion of 12th convocation in 2017.
She is Council member of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan.
As we seek to document our turbulent times, the fragile and the vulnerable weigh upon the inner eye.
Remembered images of night and day spread out; carpets and tapestries mapping our journeys.
-Salima Hashmi