I am a Brooklyn-based mix-media artist.

Currently I make work that presents my Afghan-American experience.

My art-making process begins with the found picture. Since 9/11/2001, I have been collecting pictures reporting on The War On Terror. I comb through popular newspapers and printed matter to find an image that sparks my memory and imagination.

Each picture is different and calls for something new.

In the cutout series, I am commenting on the gendered nature of war.
Women are literally missing from the picture. But Afghan women have become tools for war – a means to justify violence. I cut out the shape of groups of women in burqas – to show their simultaneous absence and presence.

In other pieces, the tassels from the shawls of the village elders hold my imagination. These wool shawls called Patoo in Persian are worn by men for warmth, used as prayer mats and serve many purposes. My father and uncles all have Pattoos. In my work, I merged the Patoos into an octopus-like organism reaching out to pull on the soldiers’ guns. In this way, I give the unarmed village elders agency.

In Dancing Taliban the theatrical lighting of the picture caught my eye.
The captured Afghan man is held at gunpoint by Western soldiers. He has surrendered and will do anything he is asked to do. In this final humiliating moment, I show him or shadow/ghosts of him perform the Attan – a traditional Afghan dance performed before battle.

I appropriate the picture to show my Afghan-American experience. I humanize the stereotyped – “othered” image – of the Afghan/Muslim person. I believe it is these demonizing images that led to the in Central Asia. Where the Afghan/Muslim man is shown as a barbaric and violent terrorist – I draw in what is familiar to me – a softness/tenderness. Where the Afghan/Muslim woman is shown as a silent victim – I present her alongside her sisters confronting warring men.

As a refugee of war, I am deeply impacted by the wars in Central Asia.
My family fled the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan – and took refuge in America in 1984.
It is painful for me to watch Afghan/Muslim people, or any group of people for that matter, be villainized in the mainstream media. I made this body of work to counter the stereotypes that get used to justify violence in all it’s forms: alienation, detentions, torture, mindless bombings and unfounded wars. I present complex characters and stories to challenge a singular reading of a picture or a group of people.

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