Zain Alam is an artist and composer of Hindustani origin born in Flushing, Queens and raised outside of Atlanta. His work emerges from a lifelong question: in what ways can sound convey the ineffable? He contemplates especially the distance between the effable in one language and what lies beyond translation to another. His recording project Humeysha began during his year working as an oral historian for 1947 Partition Archive. Across video, performance, and installation, sound remains the central organizing principle in Alam's practice, in addition to collaborations in film, sculpture, and design.
Alam’s work has been featured in Hyperallergic, Vice, Village Voice, and The New York Times. His performances have been staged at the Rubin Foundation, Creative Time, and Center for Arts, Research and Alliances (CARA). His installations have been exhibited by the Laundromat Project, American Cultural Association of Morocco, and Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts. He completed his graduate work in Islamic studies at Harvard University. He is a spring 2025 Vermont Studio Center digital media/film fellow, a 2025 En Foco Artist Fellow, and a 50th Anniversary Fellow & Sackett Fellow with the Virginia Center for Creative Arts in fall 2025.
At MacDowell, Alam conducted research and sketched musical ideas for the initial script and score of the third installment in his ongoing audiovisual installation series, Meter & Light. Night, the latest installment, was commissioned by The Shed as part of their 2025 Open Call summer exhibition and is on view at Particle+Wave Media Art Festival in Calgary, Canada through spring 2026. Alam was a recipient of the inaugural Eden Arts Foundation Artists Now for 2025-2026 and will continue his research for Meter & Light as a 2026-2027 awardee of the Creative Research Grant by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts.
