Afghan Biographies

Ahmadzai, Mariam Ghani Mrs.


Name Ahmadzai, Mariam Ghani Mrs.
Ethnic backgr. Pashtun
Date of birth 1978
Function/Grade Author and Artist
History and Biodata

3. Biodata:

Mariam Ghani daughter of Dr. Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai and his wife Rula was born 1978 in New York, USA. Ghani holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from NYU and an MFA from SVA, and has taught at NYU, Parsons, Stevens, Otis, and Cooper Union. Mariam Ghani is a Brooklyn-based artist whose research-based practice operates at the intersections between place, memory, history, language, loss, and reconstruction. She has been awarded the NYFA and Soros Fellowships, grants from the Graham Foundation, CEC ArtsLink, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Experimental Television Center, and residencies at LMCC, Eyebeam Atelier, Smack Mellon, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. Her videos and installations have been exhibited internationally, most recently at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and Kabul, the Sharjah Biennial 10, and MoMA in New York. Her public and participatory projects have been staged in Berlin, Amsterdam, Buffalo, Detroit, New York and online. She has collaborated with artist Chitra Ganesh since 2004 as Index of the Disappeared, an archive of post-9/11 detentions, deportations, renditions and redactions, and with choreographer Erin Kelly since 2006 on the video series Performed Places. Her recent publications include an Index project in the “Historicizing 9/11″ issue of the Radical History Review; “To Not Wait for the Archive” in Mousse #34, with members of the online archive collective pad.ma; and Afghanistan: A Lexicon (Hatje Cantz & documenta, 2011), with her father anthropologist Dr. Ashraf Ghani, who was elected Afghan President in 2014.

Last Modified 2014-10-13
Established 2014-10-13