Bio:
Gazelle Samizay is a multimedia artist, curator, and community organizer whose work explores how displacement, silence, and state power shape memory, and how visual forms resist erasure. Born in Kabul, Afghanistan and raised in rural Washington state, she has exhibited internationally, including at Whitechapel Gallery (London), Gwanju Biennale (South Korea), Linden Museum (Germany), the de Young Museum, and the Slamdance Film Festival. Samizay’s work is in collections including LACMA, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and En Foco. Her writing appears in One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature (Univ. of Arkansas Press) and Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering Imperial Knowledge and Power (Duke Univ. Press). Samizay has received numerous awards and residencies, including from the Princess Grace Foundation, Craft Contemporary, and the San Francisco Arts Commission. She earned her MFA from the University of Arizona and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Artist Statement:
My artistic practice is research-driven and grounded in lived experience. Working across photography, video, installation, and social practice, I examine how displacement, silence, and state power shape personal and collective memory. This inquiry began with my own fragmented history as an Afghan American woman who left Afghanistan as an infant during the Soviet invasion and came of age in the United States in the shadow of 9/11.
Early projects were largely autobiographical, drawing from family memory and embodied experience to explore how unspoken histories—particularly those surrounding gender, sexuality, and violence—are transmitted across generations. Through video and photographic sequences, I recreated intimate domestic spaces and uncomfortable silences, using ritual, repetition, and the body to resist reductive narratives about Afghan women and culture. These works positioned personal storytelling as a way to complicate dominant representations rather than replace one singular narrative with another.
Over time, this inquiry expanded beyond my own story toward broader investigations of migration, incarceration, and institutional exclusion. My recent work is grounded in archival, historical, and site-based research, using personal narrative as an entry point into broader social and political histories. These projects engage specific sites and historical moments—from Japanese American incarceration at Manzanar to the U.S./NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan—as a way to trace how state violence reverberates across communities and generations. While my methods have expanded to include public installations, artist books, and participatory frameworks, my core concerns remain the same: how stories are produced, whose knowledge is legitimized, and how visual form can resist erasure.
Across my work, I am attentive to the ethics of representation and the risks and consequences of making certain stories visible. I aim to create sustained engagement that allows viewers to sit with uncomfortable complexity and contradiction. By grounding large geopolitical histories in specific human experiences, my practice seeks to create spaces for reflection, reckoning, and connection—without resolving the tensions it reveals. Alongside my visual practice, I write and curate as forms of research and public engagement, extending these inquiries into public discourse and collective conversation.
CV
EDUCATION
2010 MFA, Photography, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ.
2004 BA, Interdisciplinary Visual Arts and International Studies, University of Washington, Seattle, WA.
RECENT AWARDS
2024
Bias and Bigotry Mini Grant, Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Immediate Office, University of California-Berkeley. (Awarded in collaboration with Asma Kazmi).
2023
San Francisco Arts Commission Artist Grant, San Francisco, CA.
2022
Impact Projects grant, California Arts Council, San Francisco, CA. (Awarded in collaboration with the non-profit ARTogether.)
2021
Emergency Exhibit Grant, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, New York, NY.
2020
Quick Grant Award, Center for Cultural Innovation, San Francisco, CA.
2019
5th place, FestFoto, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
2nd place prize, Focus Iran 3, Farhang Foundation, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
Sidewalk Gallery commission, 4Culture, Seattle, WA.
SELECT EXHIBITS / SCREENINGS (*SOLO SHOWS)
2025
Experimental Video Art Exhibition, Twelve Gates Arts (12G) and the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival (PAAFF), Philadelphia, PA.
2024
*Compassionate Exclusion, 447 Minna, San Francisco, CA.
Homebound, Skyline Art Gallery, Skyline College, San Bruno, CA.
Rhythmic Vibrations, American Pavillion, Gwanju Biennale, South Korea.
Ink of Identity: Rereading Afghanistan (screening), San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA.
Stuttgart – Afghanistan, Linden Museum, Stuttgart, Germany.
2023
*Ink of Identity: Rereading Afghanistan, Skylight Gallery, San Francisco Public Library, San Francisco, CA.
From Afghanistan to Exile, 39th International Short Film Festival, Berlin, Germany.
de Young Open, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.
The Cup Flows Over: Art from the Soul of Iran, Gallery Berge, Paramus, NJ; Bürgerhaus Glockenbachwerkstatt (Glockenbach Townhouse Workshop), Munich, Germany.
Women Defining Women in the Middle East, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Re-Homing Instincts, Propeller Gallery, 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica, CA.
kicking the air; folding index fingers, Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY.
After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
2022
Architectures of Destruction: The presence of Afghanistan’s past in contemporary art, Kunsthafen, Cologne, Germany.
Safe Home - Unsafe Home, Els Amics del Castell de Sant Ferran, Figueres, Spain.
Khamsa, Aggregate Space Gallery, Oakland, CA.
Can you hear me OK?, LA Artcore, Los Angeles, CA.
2021
After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA.
Borderline, Angels Gate Cultural Center, San Pedro, CA.
Ways of Being Free, Southern Exposure, San Francisco, CA.
2020
After Hope: Videos of Resistance, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA (forthcoming).
The de Young Open, de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.
Emotional Numbness: The impact of war on the human psyche and ecosystems, Platform 3, Tehran, Iran.
L.A. Mise-en-Scene Festival, Los Angeles, CA.
Video Art Today, Shoebox Projects, Los Angeles, CA.
The High Wall, Inscape Arts, Seattle, WA.
Let There Be Spaces in Your Togetherness, Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN; New York Mills Cultural Center, Minneapolis, MN (2019-2020).
2019
Offal, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
Exile: The Land of Non-Belonging, UCR/California Museum of Photography, Riverside, CA.
1 Roof 2 Airs, South Dakota Museum of Art, Brookings, South Dakota.
*Khat-e Penhan / Hidden Line, Art Share LA, Los Angeles, CA.
4th Berliner Herbstsalon, Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, Germany.
Ibrida Festival, Forli, Italy.
FestFoto 2019, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
*4 Hands 4 Walls: An Architecture of Remembrance, Hangar Gallery, Santa Monica Art Studios, Santa Monica, CA (presented by Zanbeel Art).
Women in Windows, Lisa Derrick Fine Arts, Los Angeles, CA.
Focus Iran 3: Contemporary Photography and Video, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles; Viewpoint Gallery, University of California, Irvine.
2018
<Light Paradise>, Yangpyeong Art Museum, Yangpyeong, South Korea.
There is a Portal, The James Gallery, CUNY, New York, New York; Intercultural Journeys, Philadelphia, CA; Women Center Stage Festival, New York, NY.
Surrogate, Pieter Space, Los Angeles, CA.
paraspace, Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, CA.
Separation, Tin Flats, Los Angeles, CA.
Electron Salon, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, Los Angeles, CA.
Accused of No Crime: Japanese Incarceration in America, ReflectSpace, Glendale, CA.
What Keeps You Up at Night? The Arts at CIIS, California Institute of Integral Studies, San Francisco, CA; Mendocino College Art Gallery, Ukiah, CA; Gallery 7, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI; University of New Mexico Honors College, Albuquerque, NM; Centre College, Danville, KY.
2017
Storefront Media Gallery, 4Culture, Seattle, WA.
Timely Resonance/Dissonance, McNamara Gallery, University of Nevada-Reno, Reno, Nevada
*Upon My Daughter, Hangar Gallery, Santa Monica Art Studios, Santa Monica, CA (presented by Zanbeel Art).
Steeped: The Art of Tea, 108 Contemporary, Tulsa, OK.
Focus Iran 2: Contemporary Photography and Video, Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Viewpoint Gallery, University of California-Irvine.
2016
Who Are You? Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach, CA.
Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource, The Museum at Los Gatos, CA; Francis McCray Gallery of Contemporary Art, Western New Mexico University; Boedecker Theatre and Naropa University, Boulder, CO; Upez African Humanitarian Development Project, Lagos, Nigeria; Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, CA; Peninsula College, Port Angeles, WA; El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Univ. of Maine, Farmington, ME; Alexei von Schlippe Gallery, Univ. of Connecticut-Avery Point, Groton, CT; Huntington Museum of Art, Huntington, WV; Allegheny College, Meadville, PA; Hollins University, Roanoke, VA; October 2012-2016.
2015
Stateland: American Artists’ Filmmaking Now, Whitechapel Gallery, London; Fabrica, Brighton, UK.
Realities and Concepts, Month of Photography LA Group Show, Lucie Foundation, Santa Monica Art Studios, Santa Monica, CA.
Belonging, Wing Luke Museum, Seattle, WA.
2014
9th Seattle South Asian Film Festival, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle, WA.
Islam Contemporary, Fayetteville State University, NC; Ellington White Contemporary, Fayetteville, NC.
e4c at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA.
Slamdance Film Festival, Park City, UT.
2013
Same, same but different, The Natural History and Ethnography Museum, Freiburg, Germany.
Muslima: Muslim Women’s Art and Voices, International Museum of Women, San Francisco, CA.
Women’s Work: Culture and the Feminine, ArtXchange Gallery, Seattle, WA.
2012
*im/pure, LawrieShabibi Gallery, Dubai, UAE.
Social Order: Women Photographers from Iran, India and Afghanistan, Photo Center NW, Seattle, WA.
2011
Marrakech Art Fair, Palace Es Saadi, Marrakech, Morocco.
Heroes and Villains, Lawrie Shabibi Gallery, Dubai, U.A.E.
2010
In These Rooms, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE.
METAMORPHOSIS (2-person exhibit w/ Sa'dia Rehman), The Guild Gallery, New York, NY.
2009
22nd Instants Vidéo. Marseilles, Martigues, Port-de-Bouc, Aix-en-Provence, France; Alexandria, Cairo, Egypt; Ramallah, Palestine; Damascus, Syria; Katowice, Bytom, Poland.
INVIDEO 2009, Milan, Italy.
Art Video Screening, Bio Roxy, Örebro, Sweden.
Videoholica International Video Art Festival, Varna, Bulgaria.
OK.Video-Jakarta International Video Festival, National Gallery of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia.
7th KaraFilm Festival, Karachi, Pakistan.
2008
*Stereotyping the Asian Feminine. Lionel Rombach Gallery, Tucson, AZ.
Videophile, Phoenix Video Festival, Brighton, UK.
Mosaic: Cultural Identity in America, Arizona State University Museum of Anthropology, Tempe, AZ.
After Tractatus: Art in Amazonia. Universidad Nacional, Bogotá, Colombia; Universidad de Iquitos, Iquitos, Peru; Universidad del Estado del Amazonas UEA, Manaus, Brazil; Biblioteca Publica del Banco de la Republica, Bogotá, Colombia.
COLLECTIONS
Center for Photography at Woodstock, Woodstock, NY.
CHROMA, The Arts and CIIS, San Francisco, California.
En Foco, Bronx, NY.
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
2025
"Disorientations, Healing, and Hope with Misbah Yusuf Mamoon, Gazelle Samizay & Labkhand Olfatmanesh,” Art, Hope, Action: Creative Praxis in Pandemic Times, Ed. by Padma Maitland, Archive Books, 2025.
2024
“‘Lives from the Ruins’: An Interview with the Curators of Stitching Keffiyehs,” Millennium Film Journal, Issue 80, Fall 2024.
2023
Linda Komaroff, Women Defining Women: Contemporary Art of the Middle East and Beyond, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 2023.
Greg Hernandez, “Women’s History Month at USC celebrates female pioneers and their stories,” USC News, February 27, 2003.
Sarvy Geranpayeh, “Exhibition of artists from Afghanistan seeks to challenge Americans’ perceptions of the country,” The Art Newspaper, February 23, 2023.
“New PEM Exhibition Spotlights Contemporary Asian Filmmakers,” India New England News, February 10, 2023.
2022
Keegan Koberl, “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion: Meet Five Faculty Members Making Room for Inclusion in Their Courses,” Cal Poly News, September 6, 2022.
Misaq Kazmi, “Gazelle Samizay, artist & gallery director at Worth Ryder, UC Berkeley,” Afghanistan by Afghans, April 8, 2022.
2021
Chloe Veltman, “Afghan artists in California's Bay Area step up to help artists still in Afghanistan,” NPR, December 8, 2021.
Jaweed Kaleem, “Meet The Afghan Artist Who Wants To Help Creators Free Themselves From The Taliban,” Circle Around, September 15, 2021.
Rebecca A. Proctor, “Concern grows for Afghanistan’s cultural heritage under new Taliban rule,” Arab News, September 1, 2021.
Carolina A. Miranda, “After the withdrawal, U.S. Museums need to tell a richer story about Afghanistan,” Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2021.
Zohra Saed, “Heart Heat, Ishq and Eros in the Collaborative Artwork of Gazelle Samizay, Laimah Osman and Sahar Muradi,” Hyphenations, Syracuse University Press.
2020
“’The de Young Open’ Artists Inaugurate the Exhibition,” de Young Musuem, November 6, 2020.
Rafael Soldi, “Q & A: Gazelle Samizay & Labkhand Olfatmanesh / The High Wall,” Strange Fire Collective, October 7, 2020.
2019
Nadia Maiwandi, “Focus Iran 3” Photography Exhibition Turns Its Lens on Intolerance,” LA Weekly March 7, 2019.
2018
Vince Schleitwiler, “Video Links Muslim and Japanese American Histories at Manzanar,” International Examiner, April 2, 2018
PUBLICATIONS
2025
Gazelle Samizay, “Disrupting the Colonial Canvas: Afghan Art in the Wake of Withdrawal,” Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering Imperial Knowledge and Power, Ed. by Wazhmah Osman and Robert D. Crews, Duke University Press, 2025.
2020
Seelai Karzai, Sahar Muradi, Gazelle Samizay and Helena Zeweri, “AAAWA Statement and Action Plan for Black Lives Matter, aaawa.net, June 2020.
2019
Helena Zeweri and Gazelle Samizay, “Fragmented Futures: Afghanistan 100 Years Later,” Fragmented Futures: Afghanistan 100 Years Later Exhibition Catalogue, November 2019.
2016
Gazelle Samizay, “Territorially Defined Exhibitions,” in “Comments on Art Institutions and Practices” VISIT Magazine, Issue 3, Ed. by Leanne Elizabeth Simaan, October 2016.
2010
Gazelle Samizay, “Gazelle Speaks,” One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature, Ed. by Zohra Saed and Sahar Muradi, University of Arkansas Press, 2010.
SELECT PRESENTATIONS
2025
Guest Lecture, Diasporas and Belonging: Anthropological Perspectives, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada, September 24, 2025.
Presentation (with Helena Zeweri), “Bureaucratic Violence and the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan: An Artistic and Ethnographic Perspective,” Displaced Arts: Creative Practices and Geographies of Asylum Symposium, Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
2024
Panel Discussion, “Intersectional Identities,” South Asian Literature and Art Festival, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
Organizer of Panel Discussion, Compassionate Exclusion: Afghan Stories of Seeking Refuge in America, 447 Minna, San Francisco, CA, December 4, 2025.
2023
Panel Discussion, “Birds of No Nation: Afghan Women on Art, Gender, Freedom, and Exile Conversation,” USC Libraries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
2022
Artist Talk, University of Virginia-Charlottesville, Online.
2021
Panel Discussion, ’Surviving the Post-9/11 Human Rights Crisis and Reclaiming Rights for All,” Center for Constitutional Rights and Haymarket Books, Online.
Artist Talk, “Chasing Ghosts: Silence, recollection and belonging in the Afghan diaspora,” New World School of the Arts, Miami, FL.
Panel Discussion, “Fighting Islamophobia and Misrepresentation,” Hate Is A Virus, Online.
Presentation, “The Multiple Lives of the ‘Afghan Girl,’” Society for Photographic Education National Conference, (Virtual).
2020
Artist Panel, “The de Young Open,” de Young Museum, San Francisco, CA.
Artist Talk, After Hope Working Group, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA.
2019
Artist Panel, “Art, Trauma and Healing,” moderated by Camilla Querin, ArtShare LA, Los Angeles, CA.
Artist Talk, Open Show LA, Bruce Lurie Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.Artist Panel, “Focus Iran: Artists in Conversation,” moderated by Holly Jerger, Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA.
Performance Lecture, “In Search of Baba Singh,” University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA; ONE Archive, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
2018
Artist Panel, “Accused of No Crime: Japanese Incarceration in America,” Downtown Central Library, Glendale, CA.
Artist Panel, “Culture Clash: A Discussion For And By Third Culture Women,” Women’s Center for Creative Work, Los Angeles, CA.
2017
Artist Talk, “Manzanar: Tracing Shadows of Oppression Across Time and Space,” Society for Photographic Education West Conference, Tahoe City, NV.
Artist Panel, “Women in Contemporary Photography and Video,” Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, CA.
2016
Artist Panel, “It Starts from Within: Art, Power and Expression,” Museum of Latin American Art Long Beach, CA.
2015
Artist Talk, Distant Attachments: Unsettling Contemporary Afghan Diasporic Art, City Lore Gallery, New York, NY.
2012
Artist Talk, “Release Me: Metamorphosis and the Art of Self-Making,” Society for Photographic Education National Conference, San Francisco, CA.
2011
Gupshup: Conversations with South Asian Women Artists, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Seattle, WA.
2010
Artist Talk, “Afghan/American: Family Politics in the Afghan Diaspora,” Society for Photographic Education National Conference, Philadelphia, PA.
Artist Talk, Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.
RECENT TEACHING EXPERIENCE
2021-2025
Instructor, “Exhibition Installation Practices,” Worth Ryder Art Gallery, University of California-Berkeley, CA.
2025
Workshop, “Bi-Lingering: Voices of Mother Tongues,” Afghan American Conference, UC Berkeley, CA.
2023
Workshop, “Dear Bi-Lingering: The Language of Letters,” USC Libraries, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA.
2021
Workshop, “Dear Bi-Lingering: The Language of Letters,” After Hope Symposium, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA.
Lecturer, Global Mentors Program, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
Workshop Leader, “Inner-Act: Collage Making Workshop,” Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, New York, NY.
2020
Workshop Leader, “Sketch Memory: Impressions, Inspirations and Aspirations,” Asian Art Museum and CalPoly, San Luis Obispo, CA.
2019
Workshop Facilitator, “Outlets for Creative Expression: Afghan American Artists and Writers Association,” Afghan American Conference, University of California-Irvine, Irvine, CA.
Visiting Artist, Digital Storytelling: What does it mean to be an American?, Culver City High School, Culver City, CA.
2018
Workshop Facilitator, “How Culture Matters: Tools for Social Justice through Self-Empowerment,” Afghan American Conference, New York University, New York, NY.
RESIDENCIES
2022
San Francisco Arts Commission, San Francisco, CA.
2021
Side Street Projects, Los Angeles, CA.
2020
TAM FORUM, Torrance Art Museum, Torrance, CA.
2019
Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA.
Level Ground, Los Angeles, CA.