If you need or would like to know more about me and my career as an artist than what I have shared below, please feel free to just look my name up online and you'll find plenty.
Born to lineages of mystics and modernisers, I am an Afghan-bred, American-born conceptual artist with degrees (BA, MA) in Cultural Anthropology. My creative practice to date has utilised an experimental ethnographic approach, combining qualitative research, traditional storytelling, postmodern narratives, 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.
For the last several years, I have been on a path connecting more deeply with my authentic self, ancestral roots, emotional core, and physical body through shamanic practices; using various shamanic voyage rituals and different forms of modified consciousness techniques including chanting, meditation, drumming, breathwork, bodywork, music, dance, and plant medicines. This has led me to complete a range of trainings and experiences that have helped to radically transform my life and creative practice into what I call "7 Level Living."
The seven levels experience can be found in many different forms, including the seven levels of Consciousness in Shamanism, the seven levels of Being in Sufism, the seven different major Chakra Portals in our bodies, and even seven Types of Migration in the world today.
In my vision of "7 Level Living," I understand the experience as 7 ways of engaging with oneself, others, and the world we are a part of - not in a vertical experience of attainment, but rather a holistic experience of simultaneity. These ways of engaging can help lead us towards not only a more profound understanding of ourselves and our place in the world, but just as importantly to deeper relationships with people, community, the natural world, and the multiverse through which we are all connected.
These seven levels of living or ways of engagement are:
CREATIVE - willing to do with originality of thought and imagination through various forms of art and storytelling
ANCESTRAL - gaining knowledge from, and an understanding of, those in our lineage who came before
INTUITIVE - learning to trust that which is spontaneously derived from a natural feeling coming from one's core
CEREMONIAL - living a life of sincerity characterised by ritual and gratitude
CONNECTED - being of humble service as a way to bring together and build community
CONSCIOUS - engaging with integrity to be attentive to oneself, others, and the world
DECOLONIZED - acting to free, and be free of, all forms of oppression so as to be authentic in all one is and does
Born to lineages of mystics and modernisers, I am an Afghan-bred, American-born conceptual artist with degrees (BA, MA) in Cultural Anthropology. My creative practice to date has utilised an experimental ethnographic approach, combining qualitative research, traditional storytelling, postmodern narratives, 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.
For the last several years, I have been on a path connecting more deeply with my authentic self, ancestral roots, emotional core, and physical body through shamanic practices; using various shamanic voyage rituals and different forms of modified consciousness techniques including chanting, meditation, drumming, breathwork, bodywork, music, dance, and plant medicines. This has led me to complete a range of trainings and experiences that have helped to radically transform my life and creative practice into what I call "7 Level Living."
The seven levels experience can be found in many different forms, including the seven levels of Consciousness in Shamanism, the seven levels of Being in Sufism, the seven different major Chakra Portals in our bodies, and even seven Types of Migration in the world today.
In my vision of "7 Level Living," I understand the experience as 7 ways of engaging with oneself, others, and the world we are a part of - not in a vertical experience of attainment, but rather a holistic experience of simultaneity. These ways of engaging can help lead us towards not only a more profound understanding of ourselves and our place in the world, but just as importantly to deeper relationships with people, community, the natural world, and the multiverse through which we are all connected.
These seven levels of living or ways of engagement are:
CREATIVE - willing to do with originality of thought and imagination through various forms of art and storytelling
ANCESTRAL - gaining knowledge from, and an understanding of, those in our lineage who came before
INTUITIVE - learning to trust that which is spontaneously derived from a natural feeling coming from one's core
CEREMONIAL - living a life of sincerity characterised by ritual and gratitude
CONNECTED - being of humble service as a way to bring together and build community
CONSCIOUS - engaging with integrity to be attentive to oneself, others, and the world
DECOLONIZED - acting to free, and be free of, all forms of oppression so as to be authentic in all one is and does
