GOOD TALK WITH MARIAM GHANI
Director & Producer of WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED
Mariam Ghani's previous projects in Afghanistan have documented the spatial politics of the post-war constitutional assembly, real-estate speculations in reconstructed Kabul, afterlives of former secret prisons, diasporic translators in theaters of war, and forgotten histories of Afghan modernists, artists and intellectuals.
Her films and installations have been presented by IFFR, CPH:DOX, transmediale, Lincoln Center, MoMA, the National Gallery, Documenta, CCCB in Barcelona, Garage in Moscow, and the Liverpool, Sharjah and Gwangju Biennials, and are in the permanent collections of the Guggenheim, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Arab American National Museum, the Sharjah Art Foundation (UAE), and the Devi Art Foundation (India). She co-wrote Afghanistan: A Lexicon with Afghan president Ashraf Ghani and co-created the Afghan Films online archive with Pad.ma.
As a visual artist and independent filmmaker, Mariam has produced or co-produced 27 short films and multiple-channel installations, six transmedia projects, live cinema events, and a number of traveling film programs, exhibitions, conferences, and discussions, with production partners including Alternet, Creative Time, Die Zeit, Asia Art Archive, Asian Contemporary Art Week, New York University, the Queens Museum of Art, the Sharjah Art Foundation, the Dhaka Art Summit, Secession in Vienna, the Wellcome Collection in the UK, the Rogaland Kunstsenter in Stavanger, the Goethe Institute in Kabul, and Ryan Lee Gallery in New York, which distributes her short-form and installation work.