Education
Ahsan attended Graveney School and left in 1999. In 2005, he completed a BTEC in Foundation Art and Design at Chelsea College of Arts. In 2008, he graduated with a Bachelor in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins.
In 2009, he completed an Master of Arts in Critical Writing and Curatorial Practice at Chelsea College of Arts.
In 2011, he completed an International Curators Course at Gwangju Biennale Foundation.
Career
His father, Syed Abu Ahsan (born 1939), is a civil servant, and his mother, Farida Ahsan, is disabled. Ahsan"s artwork encompasses drawing, sound, painting, appropriated text work, sculpture, photography, performance, video, sound live art, directing exhibitions and critical writing. His themes as an artist revolves around post-colonial history, Pan-Islamism, diaspora politics, indexing time, the prison system and new formations of imperialism.
He is an exhibition and events curator and has presented projects at Tate Britain, The Guild Gallery in New York, Deptford X, Shanaakht Festival in Pakistan, Shilpakala Academy in Bangladesh and across artist-run spaces.
He is the co-ordinator of Other Asias – an artists-run organisation of 10 interweaving curatorial currents, exploring national and regional representation. He is the co-curator with Fatima Hussain of the REDO Pakistan project – a nomadic art project that circulates through the United Kingdom, Pakistan and Bangladesh.