Join us on Wednesday, January 4 for an evening of informal conversations هم نشینی/Ha’m-neshini (translated from Farsi as “sitting together”) in solidarity and kinship with our Afghan and Iranian siblings. We come together as artists and organizers in the diaspora, to share, amplify, and weave together a trajectory of long-lasting cultural and political gender/sexual oppression in Iran and Afghanistan. In the tradition of a  هم نشینی/Ha’m-neshini event, we will use our personal and collective memories and stories as points of departure to raise awareness and imagine together, alongside audience members, what a transnational feminist approach might look like.

Beyond the shared histories of patriarchal violence and control over our bodies, the current parallel political events unfolding in Iran and Afghanistan are reminders that the closer and more attuned we are to one another’s struggles, the more forceful our actions can be in building new models of sisterhood.

As we enter the fourth month of the “Woman, Life, Freedom” revolution in Iran, sparked by the killing of 22-year-old Kurdish Jina (Mahsa) Amini in the hands of the regime’s police, the Taliban government has seized power in Afghanistan resulting in a ban and further violence preventing girls from attending school and universities (among other edicts restricting women’s lives). Both the Islamic Republic Regime and Taliban use violence and constraints on women’s bodies, freedom of choice, and movement. As we center feminism in the fight against patriarchy and dictatorship, we equally see feminist struggles as struggles against all modes of oppression, including ethnicity, class, and religion. We are not free, until we are all free.

Jin. Jîyan. Azadî.

Womxn. Life. Freedom.

This event is held in conjunction with the exhibition Always In My Heart, curated by Muheb Esmat and currently on view at Smack Mellon.

***هم نشینی/Ha’m-neshini is a discussion and storytelling series with a focus on the global south, organized by Morehshin Allahyari since 2017.

Participating Artists

Shiraz Fazli

Bahareh K.

Nooshin Rostami

Zelikha Zohra Shoja

Organized and moderated by Morehshin Allahyari.