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Mariam Ghani

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Mariam Ghani
مریم غنی
Born1978 (age 45–46)
New York City, U.S.
Occupation(s)Visual artist, photographer, filmmaker, social activist
Years active2000–present
Parent(s)Ashraf Ghani
Rula Saade

Mariam Ghani (Pashto/Dari: مریم غنی; born 1978) is an Afghan-American visual artist, photographer, filmmaker and social activist. She is the daughter of Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, ex-president of Afghanistan, and Rula Saade, former First Lady of Afghanistan.

A member of the Visual Arts faculty at Bennington College, Ghani is the collaborator and partner of Chitra Ganesh and is represented by Ryan Lee Gallery.[1]

Biography

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Mariam Ghani was born in 1978 in Brooklyn, New York,[2]. She is of Afghan and Lebanese descent. Her father, Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, served as the president of Afghanistan from 2014 to 2021.[3] Her mother, Rula Saade, is a Lebanese citizen.[4] Ghani grew up in exile and was unable to travel to Afghanistan until 2002, at age 24.[4] Her family lived in the suburbs of Maryland. In 2000, Ghani graduated from the New York University with an undergraduate degree in comparative literature. She earned a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in video photography and installation art in 2002. Ghani was an Eyebeam resident.[5][6] She has been a member of the Visual Arts Faculty at Bennington College since 2018.[1][7]

Work

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Since 2004, Ghani has been working on a multimedia project entitled Index of the Disappeared, with her long-time collaborator and partner Chitra Ganesh.[8] The project is a record of the United States' detention of immigrants post-9/11 and public reaction to the treatment of immigrants. The project has grown and evolved over time, leading to a short film, How Do You See the Disappeared?, as well as a web project.[9] Some of the other materials are transcripts, scraps of video, or radio clips.[2] She has presented her exhibits at the Transmediale Berlin (2003), Liverpool (2004), EMAP Seoul (2005), Tate Modern London (2007), the National Gallery of Art Washington, D.C. (2008), Beijing (2009) and Sharjah (2009, 2011). [7]

In addition to the Index, she has made multiple film projects, including Like Water From a Stone, a 2013 project Ghani filmed in Stavanger, Norway about the transformation the country underwent with the discovery of oil in 1969, and The City & the City, a 2016 short film produced in St. Louis, Missouri looking at the social upheaval institutionalised inequity has created in the US.[3] Other films, like The Trespassers, shown at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery in 2014, examines the problems inherent in translating languages.[10] Ghani sees her use of digital media and technology as a toolkit for creating her art.[11]

In addition to her visual art works, Ghani works as a journalist,[7] and writes and lectures on issues affecting the Afghan diaspora. She is a member of the Gulf Labor Working Group, an advocacy group for workers building museums in Abu Dhabi.[12] She is also working as an archivist to digitize and reimage works produced by Afghan state filmmakers between 1978 and 1991, during the Communist period.[2] She has also commented that Radio Television Afghanistan has an "amazingly rich archive of audiovisual material deserving of wider attention."[13] Much of her work has a political component and speaks to systemic inequality in social and economic systems. She is both a women's rights and human rights activist.[2]

Ghani's feature-length film What We Left Unfinished is a documentary of incomplete Afghan films created from 1978 to 1991. In a 2021 interview with Art Forum, Ghani described her film What We Left Unfinished as a reflection on Afghanistan's unsettled communist period, from unfinished artworks to unfinished political movements.[14]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Mariam Ghani".
  2. ^ a b c d Liz, Robbins (20 February 2015). "Mariam Ghani, a Brooklyn Artist Whose Father Leads Afghanistan". The New York Times. New York, New York. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  3. ^ a b Pilgrim, Sophie (15 March 2015). "What links Kabul with Alaska, Norway's oil capital and St. Louis, Missouri?". Paris, France: France 24. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  4. ^ a b Goudsouzian, Tanya (1 October 2014). "Afghan first lady in shadow of 1920s queen?". Doha, Qatar: Al Jazeera. Retrieved 1 August 2015.
  5. ^ "Mariam Ghani | eyebeam.org". eyebeam.org. Retrieved 2016-01-28.
  6. ^ "Mariam Ghani | P.S.1 Studio Visit". momaps1.org. Retrieved 2016-02-01.
  7. ^ a b c "cv". Retrieved 20 December 2024.
  8. ^ Ganesh, Chitra; Ghani, Mariam (2011-09-01). "Introduction to an Index". Radical History Review. 2011 (111): 110–129. doi:10.1215/01636545-1268740. ISSN 0163-6545.
  9. ^ Saed, Zohra; Muradi, Sahar, eds. (2010). One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan American Literature. University of Arkansas Press. pp. 10–12. ISBN 9781610752909.
  10. ^ Miranda, Carolina A. (16 August 2014). "How L.A.'s Islamic art shows might expand our 'Middle East' vision". Los Angeles Times. ISSN 0458-3035. Retrieved 2015-08-01.
  11. ^ Heuer, Megan (September 2013). "Digital Effects". Art in America. 101 (8): 96–105. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  12. ^ Uncommon Grounds: New Media and Critical Practices in North Africa and the Middle East. London: I.B. Tauris & Co. Ltd. 2014. pp. 346–347. ISBN 9781784530358.
  13. ^ Mohammad, Niala (31 October 2014). "The First Daughter of Afghanistan-Mariam Ghani". Across the Durand. Voice of America. Retrieved 31 July 2015.
  14. ^ "Mariam Ghani on Afghanistan's unfinished histories". www.artforum.com. 22 September 2021. Retrieved 2021-09-28.
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