Lali Khalid

DescMehreen (Lali) Khalid (b. 1980, Lahore, Pakistan) is a visual artist who lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. Her interdisciplinary practice explores diaspora, displacement, identity, memory, and migration. Working across photography, video, and text, she engages with the nuanced dynamics of belonging, family, loss, and the quiet rituals of home. Her work occupies the space between the public and the private, informed by personal experience and grounded in love and resilience.

Khalid's work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions internationally. She was recently recognized as a Distinguished Fellow for the Penland School of Craft's 2026 Winter Residency and received the 2025–2026 Diane Dammeyer Fellowship in Photographic Arts and Social Issues from the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago. Her first monograph, Home. In my heart, beating far away, was published in 2021 by Artvoices Books. Her latest book, Letters to Azan, is scheduled for release in June 2026 by Workshop Arts.

Khalid received a Fulbright Scholarship in 2007 and earned her MFA in Photography from Pratt Institute. She holds a BFA in Printmaking from the National College of Arts in Lahore. She currently serves as a Visiting Artist in Photography at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.