Mariam Ghani: Reconstructions and Speculations

Large, angled gray cliffs with a blue sky background with four people lying on the rocks, blending into the scenery.
Like Water from a Stone (Vigdel #4) (2014), digital C-print, 30" x 45".
View through the middle of a bridge underpass with columns covered in graffiti and other markings.
The City & The City: Cotton Belt Freight Depot (2015), ink jet print mounted on aluminum, 30" x 45".
A blurry hand holding up a gold magnifying glass over typed words on a page.
Still from The Trespassers (2011), one channel video, four channel audio installation with archive, dimensions variable. photo / courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York
Like Water from a Stone (Vigdel #4) (2014), digital C-print, 30" x 45". The City & The City: Cotton Belt Freight Depot (2015), ink jet print mounted on aluminum, 30" x 45". Still from The Trespassers (2011), one channel video, four channel audio installation with archive, dimensions variable. photo / courtesy of the artist and RYAN LEE Gallery, New York

Mariam Ghani is an artist, writer, and filmmaker. Her work looks at places, spaces, and moments where social, political, and cultural structures take on visible forms, and spans video, sound, installation, photography, performance, text, and data. She has exhibited and screened at the Guggenheim, MoMA, Met Breuer, and Queens Museum in New York City; and the National Gallery in Washington, DC, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona, the Rotterdam and CPH:DOX film festivals, the Sharjah and Liverpool biennials, the Dhaka Art Summit, and dOCUMENTA (13) in Kabul and Kassel, among others. Some of her recent texts have been published in e-Flux, Frieze, Foreign Policy, and Triple Canopy; and the readers Assuming Boycott: Resistance, Agency and Cultural Production; Critical Writing Ensembles; Dissonant Archives; Social Medium: Artists Writing 2000-2015; and Utopian Pulse: Flares in the Darkroom. Ghani has received a number of fellowships, awards, grants, and residencies, most recently from Creative Capital, Art Matters, the 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale Law, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Ghani is known for projects that engage with places, ideas, issues, and institutions over long periods of time, often as part of long-term collaborations. These include: critical, curatorial, conservation, and creative work with the national film archive Afghan Films, since 2012, with support from the media archiving collective Pad.ma and a number of international art institutions; the video and performance series Performed Places, ongoing since 2006, in collaboration with choreographer Erin Ellen Kelly and composer Qasim Naqvi; and the experimental archive and discussion platform Index of the Disappeared, initiated with artist Chitra Ganesh in 2004, which has also become a vehicle for collaborations with other activists, archivists, artists, journalists, lawyers, and scholars.

Ghani is currently a visiting scholar at the Center for the Humanities at the Graduate Center, City University of New York; and a fellow at the New York Public Library. In fall 2018, she will take up a faculty appointment at Bennington College.

Supported by the Tenaglia family and cosponsored with AAP Connect.