Check Out Aunia Kahn’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Aunia Kahn.

Hi Aunia, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
Becoming a professional artist was an accident. Like most kids, I loved to create. I painted, built things, wrote songs, but I never thought of it as a career. It honestly never occurred to me that creative fields were even an option.

When I first thought about what I wanted to do with my life, I wanted to be a surgeon or a therapist. I wanted to help people who were sick or struggling. I grew up in an unsupportive, often cruel home, and my instinct was always to figure out how to help someone else live a better life.

In college I got very sick and had to drop out. Art became my salvation. It was private and dark, a kind of visual journal, a way to process what I was going through as my health kept declining. Traditional mediums made me sick and risked life-threatening allergic reactions, so for almost two decades I worked exclusively as a digital artist. I was so grateful to have a way to keep creating through all of it.

Then my friend Roger suggested I try entering art exhibitions. It was terrifying, but I figured why not, because I felt I had nothing to lose. I started getting accepted and winning local and regional awards. My work ran darker than what some audiences wanted, and I got backlash for it. Some pretty harsh things were said, and at times I overheard them because I was in the vicinity and people did not know who I was at the time. That pushed me to look at galleries outside my state, not for growth exactly, but for places that would actually accept the work. That decision led to a 20-year career showing in galleries and museums across North America, Europe, and Asia.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Any field or career has struggles. For me, it has been mostly my health getting in the way. For over 20 years of my career I was pushed into using digital mediums since I was unable to touch traditional mediums without life threatening allergic reactions. That being said, starting back in 2004 digital was very frowned upon, and I had to work hard to get my work into the gallery circuit, since most digital art was seen as purely commercial. Even so, I got into a lot of wonderful shows in galleries and museums, won awards, and was really supported. But I was sadly not happy with the art I was making. I wanted to work in traditional medium.

Around 2018, I finally got a diagnosis and medications for what had been holding me back, and it opened the door to working in gentler mediums: colored pencil, then colored pencil with watercolor and gouache. For the first time in over a decade, I could put my hands on the kind of materials I’d been locked out of, and it changed everything about how I made work. It wasn’t an instant transformation. I spent years finding my footing again, testing what my body could tolerate and what my eye actually wanted to make. Since I had built a 20 year career, it was hard to experiment, because when I did, I lost galleries, shows, collectors, and followers, and that was hard. So I would pivot back to what I knew, trying to make the traditional work look like the digital voice I’d built my name on, and I hated it. After two years of this back and forth, I gave it up. I chose joy over gallery support, collectors, and followers. I just didn’t care anymore. I did a 360 adn changed my whole artist voice. It was freeing and I am so glad I did!

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
I’m a visual artist and curator with over 20 years of experience in the art world, exhibited across more than 10 countries. I founded the Contemporary Symbolist Folk movement. I founded it, but it actually found me. It was there all along, hidden in my clothing, my home, and my culture.

What I’m most proud of is having the courage to walk away from a successful, established career and start over in a style true to myself. Alienating everything I ever knew. At first it was a very lonely place to be, but I was happy. They do say follow what you love and the support follows, and I was in total shock when it did!

Having that work find its own audience: new collectors, new galleries, features in My Modern Met, Colossal, Booooooom, Bored Panda, Create! Magazine, and Beautiful Bizarre, solo shows booked into 2028, it is mind blowing. I am also doing my first large scale solo of my new body of work with Thinkspace Projects, January 2027.

I am sharing this because I had to give everything up. I seriously thought my career was over, and I was going to do a 360 to follow my joy, and it worked out, and I want to encourage others to do the same. The audience will come if you love what you do. I finally believe that and don’t think it’s a bunch of BS, which I used to think it was.

What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
Art always haves shifts and changes. i am not sure actually. I hope most of it is for the good!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://auniakahn.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/auniakahn/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/auniakahn/
• Twitter: https://x.com/auniakahn