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HANGAMA AMIRI
About the Artist
Hangama Amiri (b. 1989, Peshawar, Pakistan) combines sewn textile work with hand-painted elements to create images that reflect on conceptions of contemporary Afghan life. Integrating traditional craftsmanship with prescient issues revolving around feminism and the politics of gender in the western and Islamic worlds, her textiles celebrate feminine subjects deemed taboo. Above all, her work strives to create symbols that give Afghan women a sense of freedom and power in their own sensuality and sexuality.
Growing up in Kabul, Amiri would visit her uncle's tailor shop before school to learn about the tools he used to make his garments. Her textile works evoke a personal diaspora as she and her family were forced to leave Afghanistan because of the Taliban. After living in Pakistan and Tajikistan, they moved to Canada when Amiri was 16-years-old. For Amiri, the act of sewing different fabric and material together becomes a metaphor for uniting fragmented identities that have had to live in multiple geographies around the world.
Amiri holds and MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University (2020). Her first solo exhibition in the United States was held at The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and touring (2023). She has mounted solo exhibitions of her work nationally and internationally at the David B. Smith Gallery, Denver; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Albertz Benda gallery, New York; and T293 Gallery, Rome. Recent group exhibitions include Sharjah Biennale 15 (2023); Smack Mellon (2022- 2023); Sharjah Art Foundation (2022). She has been recipient of multiple awards and grants including the Arts Nova Scotia Grant (2018), a Canadian Fulbright and Post-Graduate Fellow at Yale (2016) as well as the 2011 Lieutenant Governor's Community Volunteerism Award.
Hangama Amiri. Photo courtesy the artist.
IN THE COLLECTION
Hangama Amiri, "Bahar, From Kabul (Ricesack #1)", 2021
Chiffon, muslin, cotton, polyester, silk, faux leather, acrylic paint, burlap, and found fabric.
109.2 × 86.3 × 9 cm
“The front layer of rice sacks I created myself, and this particular one is pretty interesting because she – or they – are called Burāq.
Most often represented in the Islamic texts, Burāq is a living thing that is half-human, half-animal, and they’re usually represented as a horse with wings and a female-looking body.
So it has that interesting in-betweenness and queerness that was really inspiring to include this as visual imagery and to challenge our perceptions of gender.”
Hangama Amiri