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Questions of Practice: Multi-media Artist Mariam Ghani on the Tensions between Private and Public Narratives

Mariam Ghani spoke to us about her interest in examining complex spaces and social truths by juxtaposing two different “registers”—the public, or “official” register, and “the intimate, personal” register. “Narratives exist in counterpoint to each other…where there are conflicts and contested politics,” Ghani says.

Mariam Ghani is a multi-media artist, writer, and filmmaker, who served as a 2016 Center panelist in Performance. Most recently, her work was on view at the Indianapolis Museum of Art as part of Mariam Ghani + Erin Ellen Kelly: Water, Land, City. Ghani’s work has also been featured in the Liverpool Biennial (2004), the National Gallery of Art (2008), the Museum of Modern Art (2011), dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), and the Queens Museum (2016), among others.