Najmun Nahar Keya’s (b.1980, Dhaka, Bangladesh) artistic practice centers the relationship between human behavior and society. Spending five years in Tokyo on the prestigious Monbukagakusho Japanese government scholarship had a disproportionately high impact on Keya’s artistic practice. The experience of being an immigrant in a country not known to welcome immigrants brought out in her a talent for finding beauty, even when it is buried deep. Her art, too, embraces Japanese art in nuanced ways. An underlying thread within Keya’s works is the relationship between her personal memories and present experience of living in Dhaka. Coming back to Bangladesh after living in Tokyo was not easy for the artist. Dhaka, the city where she had grown up and lived her entire life, had grown bewilderingly in the five years that she was away. Using the Japanese techniques and concepts of wabi-sabi and kintsugi, Keya draws on her memories of the Dhaka she once knew.
Najmun Nahar Keya received her BFA and MFA in Drawing and Painting from the University of Dhaka, as well as an additional MFA in Drawing and Painting from Tokyo University of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited in Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, France, and other countries. She has also participated in several artist residency programs. In 2006 and 2007, Keya received a fellowship from the Aminul Islam Trust. In 2010, she won the Grand Award, organized by Berger paints Bangladesh limited. In 2018 Keya won the Charles Wallace Fellowship in the UK. The artist was formally a member of the Britto Arts Trust, the first non-profit artist run organization in Bangladesh since 2008. She was also an artist fellow at Harvard University's Lakshmi Mittal and Family South Asia Institute for the academic year 2020-2021. Her most recent solo exhibition with Aicon Contemporary, Words in the Wind, opened June 6, 2025.
The artist lives and works in Dhaka, Bangladesh.