Zain Alam

Zain Alam is an artist and composer of Hindustani origin whose work moves between sound, memory, and ritual. Raised outside Atlanta and trained in Islamic studies at Harvard University, Alam’s practice grows from a lifelong question: how can sound give form to the ineffable? Through music, video, and performance, he explores the space between what language can express and what slips beyond translation, creating experiences that merge history, faith, and belonging.

Alam’s work bridges artistic, scholarly, and communal contexts. His essays have appeared in The New Yorker and Miami Rail, and his creative projects have been featured in The New York Times, Vice, and Village Voice. He has presented performances with the Rubin Foundation, Creative Time, and the Center for Arts, Research and Alliances (CARA). His installations have been shown by the Laundromat Project, the American Cultural Association of Morocco, and the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts.

Alam’s multi-channel installation Meter & Light: Night is currently on view at The Shed in New York City as part of its 2025 Open Call exhibition. He is a Digital Media/Film Fellow at the Vermont Studio Center (Spring 2025), a 2025 En Foco Artist Fellow, and a 50th Anniversary and Sackett Fellow at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (Fall 2025). He will join MacDowell as a fellow in Spring 2026 and will conduct research in South Asia as the recipient of the 2026–27 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Creative Research Grant.

Zain Alam’s practice investigates how sound can act as a form of memory and a tool for understanding. Working across music, video, performance, and installation, he approaches sound as both medium and method, using it to trace the emotional and spiritual contours of experience that resist verbal explanation.

His work often begins with personal and inherited archives, reflecting on South Asian and Muslim diasporic life. Through projects such as Humeysha and Meter & Light, Alam constructs layered sonic environments that merge field recordings, voice, and modular instrumentation. These compositions become spaces where devotion and experimentation coexist, allowing sound to function as both documentation and transformation.

Central to his recent work is an interest in ritual as an evolving and contemporary practice. In installations and performances, he transforms sound into an architecture for reflection, where rhythm and repetition become a language of gathering and renewal.

Alam’s methodology combines research, theology, and sensory experience. His process integrates historical study with acts of listening and improvisation, revealing how sonic and spiritual traditions continue to adapt across geography and time. Through this approach, Alam creates art that invites audiences to listen as a form of witnessing, offering moments of stillness, resonance, and shared presence.

Meter & Light: Night (2025)

The Shed, New York

Video courtesy of the artist

  • Meter & Light: Night (2025)

    Performance still

    Image courtesy of the artist, Photo: Tori Mumtaz

  • Meter & Light: Day (2024)

    Recess, New York

    Image courtesy of the artist, Photo: Manuel Molina Martagon

  • Meter & Light: Night (2025)

    The Shed, New York

    Image courtesy of the artist, Photo: Tori Mumtaz

  • Meter & Light: Night Performance Ensemble (2025)

    The Shed, New York

    Image courtesy of the artist, Photo: Ahad Subzwari

  • Meter & Light: Day (2024)

    Recess, New York

    Image courtesy of the artist, Photo: Manuel Molina Martagon

  • Meter & Light: Night (2025)

    The Shed, New York

    Image courtesy of the artist, Photo: Tori Mumtaz