Public & Community Practice

Alongside my studio-based work, my practice extends into public, collective, and community-centered contexts. Through workshops, curatorial projects, public programs, and facilitated conversations, I collaborate with artists, community partners, and institutions to explore language, displacement, memory, and belonging. This work emphasizes participation, accessibility, and dialogue, and often operates at the intersection of art, education, and civic space.

The following are select examples of my public and community practice.

Workshops & Participatory Programs

Compassionate Exclusion (2024–ongoing)
Designed and facilitated a participatory escape-room experience examining U.S. immigration bureaucracy and bureaucratic violence. Managed interdisciplinary teams, audience engagement, and accompanying public programs. San Francisco, CA.

Bi-Lingering (2021–ongoing)
Co-created a participatory, multimedia art project exploring multilingual and cross-cultural identity, leading national engagement strategies and facilitating community-based workshops. Created with Labkhand Olfatmanesh. California and virtual.

Tekah Tekah (“Piece by Piece”) (2023)
Developed and led a participatory textile and storytelling project that supporting Afghan refugee women in the Bay Area through paid, Farsi-language workshops in embroidery, quilting, and visual storytelling. The project culminated in a public exhibition of participant-owned work. Supported by a California Arts Council Impact Project grant and realized in partnership with ARTogether, with co-teaching by Katayoun Bahrami. Oakland, CA.

How Culture Matters: Tools for Social Justice Through Self-Empowerment (2018)
Co-led a workshop with Helena Zeweri at the Afghan American Conference examining culture as a tool for social justice, with a focus on collective care, equity, and political engagement. Presented as a program of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA). New York University, NY.

For more examples, please visit my CV.

Curatorial & Program development

The Ink of Identity: Rereading Afghanistan (2024)
Led a collaborative, multimedia project with the San Francisco Public Library and the San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries, engaging the public in dialogue around authorship, authenticity, and global policy.

Stitching Keffiyehs: Moving images from Palestine (2024)
A film and video exhibition featuring artists from Palestine and its diaspora, spanning works from 1987–2022. Created in response to the silencing and marginalization of Palestinian voices, the exhibition foregrounds cultural production as a site of memory, resistance, and collective reflection, engaging themes of land, exile, occupation, gender, ecology, and the body. Co-curated with Asma Kazmi and Tamar Beja and presented as an exhibit of the Worth Ryder Art Gallery, UC Berkeley, CA.

Emergenc(y): Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War (2023)
Brought together established and emerging artists, including recent refugees, through a bilingual open call. Secured funding from eight academic departments and three national organizations to mount the exhibition. Installations extended into public-facing spaces to draw new audiences, while lecture performances, dance, and an accompanying anthology engaged participants across disciplines and backgrounds. Co-curated with Katayoun Bahrami and presented as an exhibition of the Worth Ryder Art Gallery, UC Berkeley, CA, in collaboration with the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA).

Reimagining Queer Futures: Afghans and Art in the Diaspora (2020)
Organized and hosted a virtual panel with the Samovar Network, bringing together scholars and artists to explore queer Afghan perspectives in contemporary art and culture. Presented as a program of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA).

Meditation on Migrations and Borders (2020)
An interdisciplinary program featuring art, poetry, and music by local BIPOC artists, exploring fluid cultural borders and nonviolent resistance. Co-presented as a program of the Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA) and hosted by Sounds of Soul Force at the Church of the Epiphany, Los Angeles. Project Lead: Maryam Hosseinzadeh.

Public Speaking & Facilitation

Guest Lecture (2025)
Diasporas and Belonging: Anthropological Perspectives, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

Presentation (with Helena Zeweri, 2025)
“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.

Panel Discussion (2024)
“Intersectional Identities,” South Asian Literature and Art Festival, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.

For more examples, please visit my CV.

Writing & Critical Discourse

Article (2025)
”Disrupting the Colonial Canvas: Afghan Art in the Wake of Withdrawal” in Decolonizing Afghanistan: Countering Imperial Knowledge and Power, Duke University Press.
This chapter draws on experiences during the U.S./NATO withdrawal and discusses the installation With/Draw and the exhibition Emergenc(y): Afghan Lives Beyond the Forever War, examining how Afghan artists challenge colonial narratives and imagine new futures.

Interview (2024)
”‘Lives from the Ruins’: An Interview with the Curators of Stitching Keffiyehs.” Millennium Film Journal, Issue 80. A conversation discussing the curatorial approach, exhibition themes, material practice, and strategies for amplifying marginalized voices through film and video art.

For more examples, please visit my CV.