Nora N. Khan, a critic, curator, and editor, has been announced as the next Executive Director of Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism, publisher of X-TRA, Los Angeles’ longest-running contemporary art journal. “I’m greatly looking forward to collaborating with X-TRA’s brilliant Editorial Board, our committed staff, and the Project X Foundation Board to create a sustainable future for the vital work of writers and artists,” said Khan.
Khan follows Shana Lutker, who left the organization in 2021 after 17 years. Since its founding in 1997, X-TRA has been a vibrant platform for vital critical writing about contemporary art, with a focus on fostering inclusive networks and expansive thinking. Khan, who steps into the role this week, will lead the organization during a significant period of transformation and growth.
Jeff Beall, Founding Chair of Project X Foundation, writes, “We could not be more excited to announce that Nora N. Khan will be the new Executive Director of Project X. We look forward to working with Nora at this momentous juncture in the history of X-TRA, as we approach our 25th anniversary. With her deep experience in art criticism, publishing, and curatorial project management, Khan is perfectly poised to guide the organization into the next chapters of our history. We are confident that Nora will help us think boldly about how X-TRA can position itself as a model for criticism, artists’ writing, and mentorship of young critics. Both X-TRA and Project X will be well served by Khan through her leadership, given her close relationship with artists and critics and her unique perspective and experience with the challenges facing the fields of arts criticism and artists’ publishing.”
X-TRA Co-Founder Ellen Birrell writes, “X-TRA began as a wild idea over studio lunches among artists. Lamenting a lack of critical discourse in the local art press, we decided to start our own art magazine, using a collaborative, discursive model. X-TRA was and still is an unruly and necessary project, for it always leaves open the question of what matters now.” Birrell adds, “The advent of Nora Khan as our new Executive Director announces our renewed commitment to the dimensionality that this collective editorial model is capable of supporting. It does so at a moment when Los Angeles’ citizenship as a world art capital is also maturing.”
“X-TRA has a singular history that has made it synonymous with serious criticism in Los Angeles and on the West Coast,” said Khan. “Established by artists for artists, it has grown to be a cultural institution with an exceptional focus on artists determining the terms of criticism as much as established critics. The editors and staff are fiercely committed to publishing the highest level of writing in a field of rapidly dwindling spaces for critical thinking in print. The last years have brought us into a tumultuous publishing field. This only affirms how vital it is to maintain the health and reach of journals like X-TRA, which have tirelessly worked to make criticism an active, lived, collective activity.”
About Nora N. Khan
Nora N. Khan’s writing, curating, and editing career has been marked by a sustained commitment to fostering platforms for rigorous long-form criticism, mentoring emerging critics in their craft, and actively supporting artists’ challenging experimental practices across disciplines. She is the Curator for the upcoming Biennale de L’Image en Mouvement in 2023, with Andrea Bellini, hosted by Centre d’Art Contemporain Genève. In 2020, she curated Manual Override at The Shed, featuring significant new commissions by Sondra Perry and Morehshin Allahyari and works by Simon Fujiwara and Martine Syms. For the past decade, she has published essays and criticism focused on experimental art and music, with a focus on digital visual culture, the politics of software, and the philosophy of emerging technology. She honed this mission in significant editorial roles at Topical Cream, HOLO, and Rhizome. As a professor at Rhode Island School of Design from 2018 to 2021, she was nominated for the John R. Frazier Award for Excellence in Teaching in recognition of her original courses on technological criticism, artists’ writing, and critical theory.
Khan’s short books are Seeing, Naming, Knowing (Brooklyn Rail), on the logic of machine vision, and Fear Indexing the X-Files (Primary Information), co-written with Steven Warwick. Forthcoming are No Context: AI Art, Machine Learning, and the Stakes for Art Criticism (Lund Humphries), The Artificial and the Real (Art Metropole), and a book on styles of ekphrastic interdisciplinary criticism, published by Strange Attractor Press. She frequently publishes in periodicals, such as Artforum and Art in America, and has written commissioned essays for major exhibitions at Serpentine Galleries, Chisenhale Gallery, and the Venice Biennale. She engages in a wide range of artistic and literary collaborations with artists, musicians, and performers, producing scripts, librettos, films, and even a tiny house. She has received a Critical Writing Grant from the Visual Arts Foundation and the Crossed Purposes Foundation and a Thoma Foundation Arts Writing Award in Digital Art, and been supported by residencies at La Becque and Eyebeam. Khan is a graduate of Harvard University, where she earned her BA in English literature and languages and was mentored by Jamaica Kincaid. She earned an MFA in fiction from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
For press inquiries, please contact Ricky Lee at ricky@rickylee.co.
Photo: Natalia Mantini