The role of art within society as a mechanism for understanding local communities, addressing injustices, and bringing about change within a community/society; emphasizing how art of and for the people is a more democratic form of creative production that does not have to play the game of the art market because rather than being made for the collector, its made for the collective (of society).
Born to lineages of Sufi mystics (paternal) and moderniser kings (maternal), I am an Afghan-bred, American-born seeker with degrees in Cultural Anthropology. My creative practice to date has utilised an experimental ethnographic approach, combining qualitative research, traditional storytelling, postmodern narrative strategies, and mixed-media artworks (often site-specific installations) to approach themes such as belonging, identity politics, conflict, artifactual history, and migration; intentionally blurring and merging the lines between fact and fiction, documentation and imagination
My artwork has been exhibited internationally including the Imperial War Museum-London, Times Square, NYC, Images Biennale-Roskilde, 3rd Dhaka Art Summit, 12th Havana Biennale, 3rd Asia Triennial Manchester, 1st Kochi/Muziris Biennale, and dOCUMENTA (13). In 2012, I was selected as a TED Fellow for the subversively critical nature of my artistic practice while living in Kabul, Afghanistan.
