Zelikha Zohra Shoja

A woman on a sand beach gripping feet casts. — Bibi Amir (Video), 2022

An outstretched hand holding a white shard. Text reads, "I swear I don't remember." — Bibi Amir (Video), 2022

A person with a hand over their shoulder. — dest e doost, 2023

A hand holds gray fabric squares. — to the undying woman in black(به زن سیاه‌پوش نامیرا ), 2024

Swans with text overlay, "Oh, my new love." — pal/imp/sest (Video), 2024

A bird carries an animal. Text overlay, "Witness." — pal/imp/sest (Video), 2024

A hand with some string. Text reads, "A: Is this a seance?" — pal/imp/sest (Video), 2024

zelikha zohra shoja

Zelikha Zohra Shoja

Website: zelikhashoja.com
Ins: @roschtve

Artist Statement

I’ve spent most of my creative energy navigating and attempting to translate intangible trauma and ultimately re-staging and re-enacting gestures from familial archives. I often find myself lingering in the liminal spaces of what is shared and kept private, exploring how they can be materialized through hauntings and communal storytelling. The root of my art practice and research is Marianne Hirsch’s notion of post-memory, or the intergenerational transmission of memory, specifically through embodiment. By playing with touch and emphasizing gesture through moving image and ephemeral fabric books, I explore how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others.

Artist Bio

Zelikha Zohra Shoja (She/They) is an experimental filmmaker working primarily in single-channel documentary forms. She is a community organizer, gham-koor, and arts educator living on unceded Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York). Born and raised in one of the largest community of Afghans in diaspora in the Washington metropolitan area, her artistic practice is engaged in geopoetics, personal and collective histories of rupture, communal storytelling, grief-work, and post-memory, or the transmission of memory. Through gestural studies, deep listening, and ephemeral fabric books, she explores how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others. She is a co-stewardess of Stone Soups, a collective meal series throughout Central New York. She holds a B.I.S. degree in diaspora studies from George Mason University and is currently pursuing an M.F.A. degree in art video from Syracuse University.

She has exhibited and participated in screenings at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse), Goethe Institute (Almaty and Tashkent), Governors Island (New York), Khodynka Gallery (Moscow), The Living Gallery (New York), Millennium Film Workshop (New York), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia), New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), Strangloscope Experimental Video International Festival (Centro Itajaí, Brazil), Worth Ryder Gallery (Berkeley), and VIFF Centre (Toronto), among others.