Natasha Jozi
My work centers on the body as a site of inquiry—a tool through which I explore multiple realities and dimensions. For me, the body is not a spectacle but an invocation: a space where performance allows engagement with physical and non-physical, material and immaterial forces. I investigate these ideas across my artistic practice, curatorial projects, and writing.
Rooted in Pakistan, I carry the ancestral knowledge of how the female body navigates cultural and social practices through ritual. This knowledge emerges both consciously and unconsciously in my work, shaping my exploration of embodiment, perception, and the interplay between the body and its cultural, social, and spiritual contexts.
Artist Bio
Natasha Jozi (b. 1988, Islamabad, Pakistan) is a Munich-based visual theorist, performance artist, curator, and writer. Her interdisciplinary practice investigates the performative self, collective consciousness, and the intersections of scientific inquiry and metaphysical thought through the lens of Eastern philosophy. Jozi’s work explores sisterhood, female connectivity, and the ritualized body, examining how shared gestures and embodied practices cultivate communal awareness. Engaging with the politics of gender, censorship, and self-censorship, she reflects on how identity is negotiated within cultural and social frameworks. Through strategies of silence, repetition, and the politics of the gaze, she creates live and video performances that intertwine sound, light, and participation, constructing immersive environments that challenge perception, presence, and the body’s limits.
ozi’s work has been exhibited internationally, with selected presentations including Return to the Story That Holds You (2025) — a performance project realized in the aftermath of her Franklin Furnace Award (2022–23), I am Enough On DURATION Residency AADK Spain (2025), On Camera: Performing the Self (curated with ECC Performance, Venice, Italy, 2022), Open Encounters at ArtCO Gallery, Berlin (2022), Karachi Biennale (2019), Loudspeaker at Vasl, Pakistan (2019), Beneath the Surface at MAWA, Canada (2019), Mohatta Palace Museum (2016), National Art Gallery, Islamabad (2016), Satrang Gallery (2015), and the International Festival of Video Art, Venice (2015).
Her participation in performance festivals spans a wide range of geographies and platforms, including On Duration with AADK, Spain (2025), Theertha Performance Platform, Sri Lanka (2019), Performance Art Intensive at The Tetley, UK (2017), BIPAF, Chicago (2015), as well as events at MagnanMetz (New York), Panoply Performance Laboratory (New York), and the Delaware Center for Contemporary Art.
As the founder and curator of House Ltd, the first platform for performance art in South Asia, Jozi has curated numerous exhibitions and public art projects that support emerging voices in contemporary performance. Notable curatorial projects include Beyond the Spectacle (PLATFORM, Munich, 2023) and We’ve Been Waiting for You (Justice Project Pakistan, 2019) ; Room of Thought, an online initiative with In_Process, India (2020); Body Becoming at Olomopolo Media, Lahore (2018); and We Are All Mad Here at the National Art Gallery, Pakistan (2015).
A Fulbright Scholar, Jozi holds an MFA in Studio Arts (Performance Art) from Montclair State University, USA, and a BFA in Fine Arts from Fatima Jinnah Women University, Pakistan. Her essays and critical writings have been featured in ArtNow Pakistan, Research in Arts and Education, and various exhibition catalogues.