Sania Khan-A Multi-Modal Storyteller

سنیعہ خان

Sania Khan (b. 1994, Pakistan) is a queer, multi-disciplinary futurist, creative technologist, filmmaker, researcher and somatic facilitator.

Her art-alchemy practice engages the technologies of story, soma, and spirit to forge liberated futures where we live in right relationship with(in) ourselves, each other, the natural worlds, and unseen worlds.

Sania's praxis infuses a decade-long career in human rights advocacy with a parallel journey of solo world travel, rooted in an ethos of
animism, healing justice and enchantment.

⋮synthesizing⋮ between worlds

Sania is the Founder of Solar House Productions, an interdisciplinary collective of filmmakers dedicated to exploring speculative futures through visual storytelling. The collective is currently on a rest sabbatical and will resume activities in 2025.

She is also Knowledge Lead of ArtsPond's thought residency, Together There, where she is leading artists, researchers and creative technologists across Canada in developing multi-disciplinary creative-research projects that explore opportunities for just digital futures.

Sania is also a Digital Justice Research Fellow with Digital Justice Lab x Trinity Square Video, where she is developing independent research exploring how the formulaic patterns of natural and galactic worlds offer alternatives for virtual platforms to engage in ethical, human-centred design strategies.

Sania received her Master's of Law (LL.M) in Human Rights at Edinburgh University as a Chevening Scholar. Her master's thesis was shortlisted for the 2019 Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada Endowment. Her research explored the politics of memory and collective futurity within the context of occupied Kashmir, focusing on opportunities for healing justice and Indigenous land sovereignty. Sania has guest lectured on human rights, occupation law and international justice at the University of Edinburgh, York University, and at her alma mater, the University of Toronto.

CV available upon request.

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ᨒ story

The Space in Between, 2021

Selected by jurors as First Place Winner of the Visual Arts category at the Scarborough Arts' 36th Annual Juried Exhibition: New Depths.

Liminality is the threshold between where we once were and where we are moving toward. It is a space that is simultaneously in motion and in utter stillness, and reveals our unbecoming, our messy and our non-linear. By weaving together stories submitted by sacred community, this experimental short film offers a motion through liminality as a site on which breakthroughs are catalyzed, and new paths are revealed.

Custard, 2024

Premiered at the Inside Out 2SLGBTQ+ Film Festival as part of their Local Heroes program at TIFF Lightbox.

In this experimental micro-documentary, five Toronto-based artists gather for a shared meal, reflecting upon the sacredness of non-conformity and healing, and the nuances of platonic intimacy and queer kinship.

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“As a filmmaker, I’m especially interested in speculative queer storytelling that explores the multiplicities of our existences beyond singular narratives. I want to offer multi-sensorial dreamscapes into possibilities that come from our joy, ease, and wayward intimacies.”

Queering Friendship: Mimi Zhu in Conversation with Sania Khan as part of the

Toronto Queer Film Festival's Queer Symposium 2022

soma ᨒ

𖦹ׂ ⚘ 𖦹ׂ

“For those of us who have experienced systemic, ancestral and/or complex traumas, we deserve to re-root into safety and ease within our bodies so that we can begin living in sustained wellness, wholeness, connection and creativity.”

Safety in the Body with Sania Khan and Siana Altiise

"In this very sacred and divinely inspired episode, it becomes undeniably clear that Sania's work is ushering the world forward into a new and liberated future. A future where we're fully embodied and in right relation with ourselves and the world around us, wholly connected to the ancient wisdom of the past, and the future we want to create.

“What I'm doing in my practice is merely giving language to, in my own unique way, the practices that have existed long before me, practices that care to be in right relationship with the natural world, with the unseen world.”

Through embodied futurism, a concept rooted in intergenerational healing and collective liberation, Sania walks with others to explore the depths of ancestral trauma and memories etched within their bodies to discover the transformative power of embracing our authentic selves. We reflect on moments in our personal journeys where we embraced unconventional choices, and explore the link between the profound power of sacred deviance and the liberation that arises from breaking away from normative structures."

Embodying Futures, Woo Knew Podcast

In this lush and regenerative conversation, writer Mimi Zhu and filmmaker Sania Khan contemplate the pivotal role of queer friendships in shaping queer futurisms. They discuss how the consciously practiced, inherently liberatory frameworks within many queer kinships enable the collective realization of imagined worlds that center interdependence, care, and healing justice.

Mimi Zhu in Conversation with Sania Khan:
On Queering Friendship

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