Sumaya Durrani is a transdisciplinary artist - epistemologist, Sufi methodologist, decolonial theorist, dissident political ontologist, anarchist-activist, and an academic with a neo-marxist bent. She is undertaking a Doctorate in Art at the University of New South Wales Sydney. Durrani locates her practice at the intersections between Doctrinal Sufism, Western Philosophy and Social Theory, Neuroscience, Postcolonial Discourse Analysis and Transdisciplinary Aesthetics. She holds a Master and Bachelor of Fine Art Cum Laude from the University of Michigan Ann Arbor, subsequently extending her studies at the Sir John Cass School of Art London Metropolitan University. Durrani has served in academic, higher executive and advisory capacities in the public and private sectors in higher education in Pakistan, Turkey, and Afghanistan. She was the Director General and Principal of the Pakistan Gem and Jewelry Institute, TDAP Government of Pakistan. Durrani founded the Punjsher Foundation Postgraduate Pilot Project in Traditional Art, an academic program grounded in Islamic Sacred texts in collaboration with Hamdard University. She presently serves as the Founder - Director of Shahkaar Research Hub, Jaanbaaz, and Urdu Markaz initiatives centred around decolonial aesthetics and Sufi praxis, interfaith dialogue, transgenerational and complex trauma, structural violence and epistemicide. Durrani has served as the Pakistan Commissioner at the Asian Biennale Dhaka 1995. In recent years, Durrani was nominated for the Abraj Capital Prize, at Art Dubai 2010 and the Jameel Prize, 2015, at Victoria and Albert Museum UK. Durrani is the recipient of the UIPA Australian Award, 2012 and the First Women Bank Award in 2011. She has exhibited widely with 40 solo exhibitions and several group shows at public and private institutions in Australia, Japan, USA, Canada, Norway, France, UK, India, Nepal, and Bangladesh. Her works are in the permanent National Collection of Pakistan at the National Art Gallery, Islamabad, and at the Trade Development Authority Government of Pakistan. Durrani is initiated in the Chishti, Qadri, Qalandari, Naqshbandi and Suhrawardi Sufi Orders. Her dominant spiritual persuasion is Chishti defined by Qalandari alignment with a strong Hallajian bent.