writer, researcher, editor, publisher

— stories, art history, sci-fi, grief, feminist histories, trees, gardens, rebels
— currently developing SLIP (Soft Lab for Independent Publishing), a research-led publishing practice

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Saira Ansari is an independent writer and editor who uses creative nonfiction and publishing to explore art practice, alternative histories, and the real and imagined peripheries of South Asia and the Arabian Gulf. For two decades, she has collaborated with institutions, artists, and writers from the Middle East, Iran, South Asia, and Brazil, and continues to consult on publishing projects for artist-led initiatives. 

Editorial projects include monographs on Bani Abidi (Hatje Cantz, 2022), Zubeida Agha (Fondation Giacometti, 2024), Khalil Rabah (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2025), Sahand Hesamiyan (Black Dog Press, 2025); readers Lala Rukh: Rupak (Grey Noise, 2017), Art in the Age of Anxiety (Sharjah Art Foundation, 2020), and Prince Faisal bin Fahd Arts Hall: The Legacy of a Saudi Art Space (Assouline, 2024); and children’s books on pioneering Arab artists, among others. 

Further back, Ansari has served as a Contributing Editor (Art) for the South Asian literary journal Papercuts; Managing Editor of monographs of Abbas Akhavan (SKIRA, 2018) and Pouran Jinchi (Akkadia Press, 2019); and as Arts Correspondent at The Rio Times (2010).

Previously, Ansari worked at Sharjah Art Foundation, where she managed publications and co-programmed the first three editions of Focal Point art book fair (2018–20), a critical platform for independent publishing. Most recently, she served as Director of Research and Publications at Misk Art Institute in Riyadh, where she established the bilingual department and organised the annual art book fair at Misk Art Week.

Alongside her institutional roles, Ansari develops long-term independent projects. Her ongoing work on the Pakistani modernist Zubeida Agha spans archives, publishing, and historiography, including the Zubeida Agha Archive at Asia Art Archive, initiated through a Lahore Biennale Foundation Research Fellowship (2016). She is the co-author of The importance of staying quiet (2014, 2025–26), an exhibition-format project engaging minimal and abstract vocabularies in Pakistani art.