Biography
Maryam Kashani's work developed out of 18 months of fieldwork at and around Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal arts college established in 2009 in Berkeley, California.
Producing ‘moving portraits’ of individuals, families, buildings and transportation infrastructures, Maryam Kashani explores the passage of time, how modes of movement and improvisation in everyday life intersect with structures of power, knowledge, economy and representation. She is currently involved in the Zaytuna Project, a series of videos and installation work produced in conjunction with her ethnographic monograph on Zaytuna College, Berkeley, California, and the knowledge practices of Muslims in the United States. Her previous films have screened at festivals, museums and universities internationally, including at the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
She received her MFA in Film/Video from the California Institute of the Arts (2003) and her PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Texas, Austin, USA (2014). She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St Louis, USA.
Born in 1977 in San Francisco, she currently lives and works in St Louis, USA.
SAF participation:
Sharjah Biennial 12
Related
Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible
This publication is a guide for visitors of Sharjah Biennial 12: The past, the present, the possible.
Our Look Was as If Two Lovers, or Deadly Enemies
Our Look Was as If Two Lovers, or Deadly Enemies (2015) is a three-channel video installation that juxtaposes two reading performances with more traditional documentary footage.