“I feel like those childhood events really impacted me, as a young girl, as a young woman, as an adult woman these days,” Amiri says, referring to her experience fleeing from the Taliban at a young age. “I always go back, reinterpret what happened back then, bringing it into the contemporaneous to see how women’s lives have changed and shifted.”

Henna Night II / Shabe Kheena II showcases Amiri’s work from her ongoing series by the same name while debuting a large-scale piece created specifically for this inaugural exhibit of VIVA’s new gallery.

An ongoing conversation

Born in Kabul, Amiri is deeply aware of the Taliban’s restrictions on women. These experiences have shaped her work, allowing her art to express the inequalities in how women are represented through history and art. Seeing her artistry as a “powerful tool,” she seeks to give voice to those who have gone unheard in Afghanistan and diaspora communities.

“For me, it’s a great privilege to express and explore my identity, explore my history as a woman, the places that I have lived through,” the artist adds. “It’s a continuous conversation.”

Educated in Canada and the United States, Amiri has exhibited internationally in Mexico, the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Italy, Turkey and Morocco, among other places. For her, the purpose behind this international showcase is creating platforms around the world, engaging communities in conversations on women’s representation.

“This is my purpose as an artist; I always thought myself as an educator, in the sense through my work I can educate but I am also travelling within my work,” Amiri explains. “I am migrating with my work through countries to countries in order to engage community.”

While the artist recognizes that each region is distinct, she believes that issues of migration, gender, family and women’s representation are universal subjects that translate across borders. Amiri points to the example of how war separates families – a situation she has experienced – as one of these common threads.

Resilient domestic scenes

Amiri’s work showcases domestic scenes as a way of expressing resistance to political oppression. Drawing on ideas of the “surveillance space” or controls on public life, the artist turns to the domestic: looking to interior spaces for a sense of home and resilience.

“If the outside is being in danger, the lens shifts into the inside,” she explains. “Interior spaces become a space of solace, a space of home again, a space of freedom and a space of unity.”

Despite the heaviness of these issues, Amiri sees Henna Night II/Shabe Kheena II as a celebration, a time of hope as a community of women prepares the bride-to-be before a wedding. Primarily working with textile, the collection features a variety of domestic scenes, including Mehmana/Guests (2022) and Photo of a Groom (2022). Beyond the art, Amiri has many memories of these nights before a wedding, as her mother used to take her to these gatherings.

“It had a very vital role in my practice even today because that’s how she was shaped by her community, and this is how my art is being shaped by that community,” she shares, adding that these topics have not received their rightful recognition.

Deeply drawn to the feminine, motherhood and forms of celebration, the artist points to a lack of visual language or materials surrounding these topics. Resistance, for the artist, can be found within oneself through the unity between people and women of interior spaces. Seeing her work as a “protest within time,” the artist feels a responsibility to recognize her work is shaping everyday life.

“It’s not a space for me to forget about what’s happening but find a way to express it through my medium and material whichever way I can,” she adds.

For more information on the upcoming Medias Res Gallery exhibit, see: www.mediaresgallery.com/exhibitions

For more information on the artist, see www.hangamaamiri.com