Aaran Sian/ The Sea of Emotions

Aaran Sian is a multidisciplinary artist and designer working at the intersection of visual art, community engagement, and social justice. Their practice envisions speculative futures, emphasises histories suppressed or hidden, and (re)claims narratives through the lens of queer and trans people of colour and other intersectional identities. Their approach to creating is highly collaborative and process-driven, carving out space for community connection, dialogue, and shared making. Through creative workshops and participatory projects, Aaran brings communities together to create layered, textured, and collectively held artworks. This approach is political — a soft resistance against spaces and cities that have historically excluded queerness and transness. Aaran’s work is deeply informed by their own experience navigating cities and spaces as a queer, nonbinary South Asian person. Their practice centres radical trans and queer infrastructures, drawing on speculative futures shaped by the politics of identity, race, gender, and queerness. They believe queer and trans people of colour are constantly rewriting what it means to live and thrive — both outside of and within systems that have sought to exclude them — offering vital, transformative visions for radically inclusive futures through a queer-ed, decolonial lens.

Aaran has been recognised for their ability to hold space with care and intention, drawing out complex, intersectional narratives and translating them into powerful visual artworks, exhibitions, and events that act as sites of reclamation for queer and trans communities of colour. In recent years, they were commissioned to co-create an exhibition and visual response within a heritage site, facilitating workshops and producing work that explores non-Western histories of gender fluidity, queerness, and resistance prior to colonialism.

As part of Connecting Camley Street in London, they produced mural artwork centring queer and trans South Asian existence in urban environments, reclaiming public space through bold, affirming imagery. Their work has been exhibited across London, as well as internationally in the US and Australia, consistently offering spaces for queer, trans, and decolonial futures to be seen, felt, and celebrated.