Kaleidoscopic No. 19: Hangama Amiri
On fragmented memories as a site of in-betweenness
Leonardo Bravo:
Hello, this is Leonardo, and I'm here doing an interview with Hangama Amiri. It's such a pleasure to connect with you. As I mentioned before, I have been following your work and it truly resonates with me, especially as I mentioned, because of my own immigrant experience. I'm drawn to histories and work that deals with memory, that deals with issues around displacement and diaspora, and issues of how we connect back to cultural histories. So thank you so much for being part of this conversation. I'm in LA right now, but I usually do these interviews from Berlin, and you are in New Haven, right?
Hangama Amiri:
I'm in New Haven, yes. Thank you so much for having me, Leonardo. This is great.
Leonardo Bravo:
Absolutely. I wanted to start off by learning about your own personal journey as an artist and my impression is that your personal journey informs so much of your work.
Hangama Amiri:
Yeah, of course. I was originally born in Peshawar, Pakistan in 1989. But I think this was during the Civil War when the majority of Afghans were migrating between Pakistan, Iran, and also Afghanistan. The three countries were kind of influx due to the immigrants and refugees going back and forth because of the war. It was a time of uncertainties that people didn't know what the future holds. So during that time, my parents moved to Kabul, Afghanistan, and I grew up in Kabul. That's why majority of times in my bio one time it mentions “born in Kabul”, and other times it says “born in Pakistan,”. We left Afghanistan during the first phase of Taliban regime in 1996. And since then we were refugees to Pakistan for a couple of years and then from there we became refugees again in Dushanbe Tajikistan.
Leonardo Bravo:
How old were you around this period?
Hangama Amiri:
I was only six or seven years old but old enough that I could remember all these memories very, very vividly.
Hangama Amiri:
I have a lots of memories like growing up in Kabul. We lived in a small community called Macroyan-e Kohna/old Macroyan where middle class Afghans lived. These buildings were built by under Russians occupation in the early 60’s and 70’s, behind this building we had our own school and I used to go to school there.
I remember being with around my friends and cousins and even when in to Pakistan and Tajikistan, we were still very close to Afghan communities. So The Afghan culture was not so removed from me. It was with me wherever I went. In 2005 we finally immigrated to Canada. So Canada became a second safe home for everyone. And, since I have completed my MFA at Yale School of Art in 2020, I have been living and working in New Haven CT.
Hangama Amiri:
I continue to think about how these memories even now. And if I look at how these cultural experiences keep coming back to my work, it's a way for me to really understand who I was as a person and as an artist. And migrating from countries to countries, while learning and growing through so many different cultures, social norms, systems, and languages, you tend to understand your body as a mobile entity. These experiences help to create a complex identities, maybe within yourself as well. And that's how I would also see my work as this kind of fragmented memories, fragmented identities, that nothing is complete, but everything just takes place in an event, doesn't have beginning or endings. What is important is to think about that in-betweenness. I reflect the in-betweenness in my upbringing through my artistic practice. My works are therefore really connected to my personal experience.
Leonardo Bravo:
I know that feeling and those recognitions very well. That kind of fragmented notion of identity and reality.
Leonardo Bravo:
So let's talk about the work itself. I suggested we touch upon the recent projects such as Threshold, and A Homage to Home and Reminiscences.
Hangama Amiri:
Yes. Threshold is shedding light on the recent ban of women's education in Afghanistan. I recently presented it at Sharjah Biennial 15 as a site-specific textile installation at Kalba Kindergarten. The installation was a recreation of the classroom settings in Kabul in my memory. So it was a perfect context because the venue was also used to be a school, and the walls still have children’s paintings on.
The installation consists of 18 sets of chairs that were very typical used for the schools in Afghanistan. These are not so much locally made. They're something that was given by or brought from NGO organizations, I remember them being were really old. They actually look like church pews.
Hangama Amiri:
There's nothing Afghani about it’s look, but in some way it represents the foreign invention being in that country for a long period of time. But we grew up with these objects. I really wanted to reflect back on these memories in order to re construct a classroom as a commentary on the politicized presence that happened around women’s lives and their rights to education as the Taliban came back in 2021, which was sadly a reoccurrence of my childhood when they first came to power in 1990s.
Hangama Amiri:
To comment on these controversial events, the installation has the chairs facing each other, and in the middle, there is a 20 feet long, 9 feet tall textile piece that consisted of around 60 school uniforms made of black cotton.
They're all hand tailored, and designed by how I remembered them. The textile piece was made in my studio, and Sharjah Art Foundation help. Fabricated my design for the School benches and chairs.
Hangama Amiri:
In the most symbolic way, The textile piece became the blackboard in between of the chairs, and in the center of the space. The attention of the audience was brought to the woven school uniforms that represent women’s participation in education, which is currently suppressed by the patristical system promoted by the Taliban regime.
My other project, A Homage to Home, also reflects on my past memories of being in Afghanistan but through the lens of day-to day objects. These objects of belongings can be found wherever I lived. They are ways for me to stay in constant conversation with my presence and my memory of home in Afghanistan.
Leonardo Bravo:
What’s interesting to see with Threshold is how much space there is for metaphor for the viewer. I mean like the simplicity of the benches in contrast to the fragility of the clothing. And then seeing this other work, which includes a lot of visual symbols, a lot of visual information. How do you make those choices in terms of how you present the work? Obviously Homage to Home has many more narrative components because of the visual elements. I'm intrigued in those choices that you make as an artist, how much to present or not.
Hangama Amiri:
That's a really good question. I think it's more around how I think collectively and individually towards my projects depending on thematic exhibitions that I work with. The site specific installation that I have done for Threshold was a very collective voice. It's something that not only felt by myself but shared with so many other people and the postwar generation in Afghanistan. So it becomes a shared experience and this cultural sort of memory for me. The contrast between hard object and soft object responds very bodily to me, yet they are also two invisible bodies, two that are in conversation with each other. Chairs are empty and uniforms are headless or bodiless.This is something very different from the figurative tendency in my work. And this was also my first time thinking sculpturally about my textile pieces. I am thinking a lot about how fabric can function on its own, to just taking a garment and a uniform by its own and putting it in the space, it's critical enough to think and to see that readymade object act as an art form. So for me, I really wanted to just focus on the uniform and then the chairs. It's nothing so abstract, but I think the concept of just bringing this immersive installation, the body reacts differently once you are inside that space.
Hangama Amiri:
It feels like that you are actually in this space of memory. You're actually going back to this artist's sense of memory of how she was thinking. So there's a very specific response that I wanted my fabric in this installation to speak differently compared to my Homage to Home series; which is more an individual approach towards objects of belongings, and the liminal spaces that I grew up in. I was interested to create a critical lens through these specific objects and their relation or attachments to home.
Hangama Amiri:
My works at Homage to Home also tends to critique the institutional side, which is in a museum. I am interested to challenge the western canons in art history by bringing my content, soft material and subject mater that delves around Afghan women’s bodies, living experiences and their nuances of everyday life. This is something we don’t usually see in the art history in the West. Therefore, I wanted to bring a homage to Afghanistan while also being aware of its historical and political attachments with foreign invasions, such as from the US. There is nothing new about it, although it was important for me to shed light on the other sides of the story, memory, and hope.
Leonardo Bravo:
Can you share a bit of how you work with these, I would call them textile pieces, but is it an applique? Like is it different fragments that you stitch together? I'm looking at a piece called Mah Chehra, Beauty Parlor, and includes Muslin, cotton, chiffon, polyester, suede, iridescent paper, iridescent fabric, silk, and found fabric.
Hangama Amiri:
Yes. The reason that I say textile is because majority of times I am interested in finding specific fabrics that are familiar to my own cultural memory or that's familiar to my eyes, such as Afghani fabrics, Pakistani, or Indian saris that I remember growing up wearing. So that's why the idea of collecting these materials from outside of my studio becomes this worldly textile. I don’t only source my fabrics from New Haven or Fashion District in New York, but I also source them through online, ordering them from South Asian countries, from Iran, turkey, or Pakistan. At the end my work is surrounded by amalgamation of different fabrics that comes from different cultural demography as well.
Hangama Amiri:
And I do use a quilting technique called fabric appliqué, it's something very simple that you draw first and then from the drawing, you cut and assemble the fabric. So there are hundred pieces of different shapes that relate to different fabrics in order to make an image come together.
Leonardo Bravo:
In looking at the Reminiscences series, these are so compelling just because most of them tend to be figurative and my impression of course, is they're referring to maybe family photographs or images from the past. Can you share a bit about this series?
Hangama Amiri:
Yeah. This series was very personal to me Leonardo, also something that I felt a little bit more intimate that sometime I debate on how much I would to share with the world. It's something that comes from this intimate photo object album from inside, private, domestic spaces, and to make it into an exhibition in a gallery, right, is a huge jump to make. But I think a great thing about this part of the story is that I really wanted to revisit those memories of growing up between these two individuals that shared a different definition around home for me. It felt autobiographical yet familiar to many Afghan immigrants and diaspora communities.
Hangama Amiri:
Because what happens in this story is that majority of times when war happens, and due to financial security, families either become dispersed or separated. In this case, often men are usually the ones who seek asylum in other countries in order to provide for their family. And so I grew up with my mom and with my three siblings while my dad was seeking asylum in Europe. And the only point of contact or communication that they had was photography and letters. These visual objects is how I see myself understanding the relationship between my parents, and it’s a continuous conversation for myself as well.
Hangama Amiri:
But it was also an amazing and sort of interesting, evolving and engaging conversation for me to go back and try to understand how our lives were back then. When I would compare these photos between my mom and my father, my mom would pose in her interior space that was usually fully furnished, carpeted and wallpapered. The images took place in Russian building complexes in Dushanbe, Tajikistan and she would pose with a traditional Afghan dress, but the background and the aesthetic of her private space has nothing recalled Afghanistan.
Hangama Amiri:
There was a high contrast between who she is and who she wanted to be, but the fact that she owned her space was such a revelation for me. And that was very striking to me.
Leonardo Bravo:
Fascinating.
Hangama Amiri:
That this individual was expressing herself in a way that no matter how far she is removed from where she is originally from, she still has this sense of personal ownership, right. That she's owning this space. And that sort of sends a message of hope or being ‘okay’ as if ‘I am doing okay’. ‘Look at me!’
Leonardo Bravo:
It also speaks of a deep sense of dignity, like standing within dignity, however, uprooted or fragmentary the conditions might be around you.
Hangama Amiri:
I think so. And these were really fascinating to kind of unlock and begin to really understand and by looking at the photography in itself and what it reveals. As compared, my father's photos were very different. Here you would see him posing in front of tulips, he would pose in the parks that he would go for a walk in Denmark, or with his buddies fishing somewhere in Norway. He presented this tranquility behind him.
Hangama Amiri:
I remembered looking at his photos and feeling proud of him, for some reason, and I would fantasize my self being there as well whenever we saw his photos. We thought that he is having the best life of his own. Right? And it's just like growing up as a young teen, you kind of create a type of American western dream that every immigrant child stores in their memory. That their ideal imagination of the other place is to be tranquil. And again, that other place could also be this imaginary home for every child, right? So for me, defining these two different homes or realities through these two individuals was very interesting because again it became a sort of universal conversation than much more a personal conversation. I think it was my intention to have this exhibition in Europe during a year that Afghanistan once again was experiencing tremendous conflict under the Taliban regime.
Hangama Amiri:
So much internal displacement was happening again. People were again being separated, the same narrative I went through in the nineties. So I felt very important to go back to my mom and dad and ask them how they feel if I portray their stories through textile. The other beautiful thing is that once you translate the photographic image into textile, textile becomes to have its own narrative. It's nothing that is so connected to those photos that I had as a source. That was another interesting aspect, removing myself from this intimate and heavy memories from the photographs, which is so, so fragile. But then it allowed me to create a new space of narrative, which made it easier for me to speak about these stories of my past.
Hangama Amiri:
In the exhibition, there were two spaces. On the first floor, I dedicated the images that were shared from my father's side, and also juxtaposed a still life with the figures as well. But then downstairs I transformed the entire space as if it was a private room, as you walked in, you feel that you are in an interior, domestic space. I fully wrapped the walls with wallpaper, I brought a mirror to kind of reminiscence about those spaces that I grew up with my mom and how she took care of herself and her new home.
Hangama Amiri:
In this space I also installed a framed 8 x 10 inch color photograph of me and my mom. In Dushanbe, she would also go to these photo booths that had these amazing backdrops that people would pose in front of them as if they're in this beautiful waterfall that looked like Niagara Falls—type of landscape. So she would send these photos to my father. And this is such a beautiful way of her claiming space, she might have been thinking that she also wanted to be in this backdrop space, a fantastical tranquil space.
Leonardo Bravo:
We've talked about these issues of memory, of diaspora, and cultural histories, but I wanted to ask, how are you thinking about the context of community building through your work? Especially within that sense of belonging because of your own refugee history and how are you seeing the potential to be more active in terms of these larger issues, these social and political issues?
Hangama Amiri:
Yeah. I think it's an ongoing research for me, even being as a diaspora artist today, graduating in 2020 and living being in the United States now, there's lots to unpack, to be honest.
Leonardo Bravo:
Well, there's a sense of privilege to that as well, right? Being able to do that.
Hangama Amiri:
Absolutely. I think the question is what does a diaspora even mean in a contemporary lens? Diaspora is something that has been removed from its original space and something's been migrated to this different context, this different inhabiting of a different space and how they navigate their everyday life. That's how I describe what diaspora means, a place that has been removed from its context. I think that's why I kept being so drawn to Michel Foucault’s essay on the Other Spaces, this might not completely relate, but I definitely keep coming back to it. He mentions Heterotopia or heterotopic experiences. It's something that when an object is being removed from its origin context or being migrated, but somehow reimagined a new space.
Hangama Amiri:
Like for example, when we go to museums, when we see these artifacts from histories in the past, but they're being presented in front of us and the way that the object is being surrounded by that environment makes the viewer to go through a sort of time lapse. That is the space that I'm talking about that doesn't have its own origin or its own unit. It's not utopia. It's something that exists in between. And that's what I was really fascinated to learn. So for me, sometimes a diasporic body relates to these ideas a lot. And living in America and Canada, I've always been kind of drawn to searching for these belongings. Like, what does that mean?
Hangama Amiri:
What does that mean if I'm closer to my own community of Afghans? What is a diaspora space looks like, how can I define it in my work, and how do we continue to go forward from there? You know? And for me as an artist, the only thing that I really get inspired is going to these commercial stores and fabric stores and something that I could find objectively that relates to home. Like majority of my exhibitions, specifically my current series, Distance Between Homes that I'm working on right now for RUMI exhibition at Aga Khan Museum. And also the exhibition that I've done at Alberts Benda Gallery, the Wandering Amidst the Colors, that entire installation was about my diasporic experiences in the United States. I would go and search for these liminal spaces that Afghan Americans share and how they organize their daily lives.
Hangama Amiri:
And sort of like going through those spaces and feeling some sense of belonging either it was also through a smell, touch, sound or just looking. Those are the kind of components of how I would feel belong to certain things. And the entire exhibition was basically mapped around those spaces that I went with a diaristic approach—of gathering visual images in order to create work out of them. So this is an ongoing conversation for me.
Leonardo Bravo:
It's fascinating, especially what you're saying, of how you find within those liminal spaces that we inhabit as immigrants, as people from a diaspora, how do you find that that notion of home? And sometimes it's sensorial, it's what you're saying, it's touch, feels, smells that take you back to a sense of longing for that place. You know, it's not a connected to an actual object that's more sensorial at times. It's a sound, it's a pattern, it's a faint trace.
Hangama Amiri:
Absolutely. And coming back to your point when you mentioned “we are privileged”. I can reference that in how our bodies are mobilized in post-globalized system. In a way living now, everything is available around us, right? It's how we are going about to search for authenticity. It's like one does not have to be in Afghanistan or India in order to experience India. As if our world became this miniature version of our identity, that we can find it anywhere we go. It is the technology shrinking our worldview and understanding of cultures in more cyber alternative way than physical. This is privilege for me.
Leonardo Bravo:
And I think one final question, because it sprung just from our chat. What's the conversation that you have with your own family about your practice and some of these issues of memory and longing, and the narratives that you build into your work that are so connected to your family?
Hangama Amiri:
That is such a good question. I think my parents are not so much into the arts, to be honest. they are very removed from what I'm doing. Although majority of times they do know my work, they know that I create work and I'm specifically working with fabrics. And they do relate to the conversations a lot, especially my mom. She is really interested in my Baazar series that I made in my solo exhibition at T293 gallery in Rome, she was very happy because she said it really reminded of her going into those spaces. It was a familiar space for her as well. I am happy that the work not only engages with my childhood memory but it also engages a generation before and after me. It was a way for me to connect my family back to my work in a more hopeful and celebratory way.
Leonardo Bravo:
Hangama this has been such a treat. For me personally, these interviews are such a unique opportunity to connect with artists and connect with the creative process and to have this little snapshot of what you do. So thank you so much. It's been a lovely and poignant conversation.
Hangama Amiri:
Thank, thank you. I really appreciate your words, Leonardo.
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