Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home

February 5, 2023 to June 11, 2023 | Project Space, Screening Room, Leir Gallery

Afghan Canadian artist Hangama Amiri combines painting and printmaking techniques with textiles, weaving together stories based on memories of her homeland and her diasporic experience. Amiri fled Kabul with her family in 1996 when she was seven years old. Moving through numerous countries over several years, they immigrated to Canada in 2005 when Amiri was a teenager. Amiri’s choice of materials stems from autobiographical origins—her mother taught her to sew and her uncle was a tailor. Her textiles also reference the colors and fabrics she remembers in the bazaars and on the streets in Kabul. She sources her materials from an Afghan-owned shop in New York City’s fashion district, collaging with fabric and painting on the surfaces. Large-scaled with frayed edges, Amiri’s textile works are made from layering fabrics, piecing and sewing them together, so the fragments collectively characterize her home from a distance. Centered on the lives of women, she builds interiors that capture her protagonists within domestic and entrepreneurial spaces and amplify a collective struggle for women’s rights in Afghanistan and around the world.

Textile work depicting the inside of a tailor shop with many colorful bolts of fabric.

Textile work depicting women standing outside of a school.

Installation Images

A museum gallery with large-scale tapestries hanging on the walls. A neon sign of a woman's hands with red nails and grapes hangs on the furthest wall.

A museum gallery with textile works such as tapestries and soft sculptures.

A museum gallery with large-scale tapestries hanging on the walls

This exhibition is the artist’s solo museum debut and will unveil a new body of work specially made for The Aldrich. It will span the entirety of the Museum’s first floor galleries and will be accompanied by the artist’s first museum publication, with an essay by the exhibition’s curator, Amy Smith-Stewart.

Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home is curated by Amy Smith-Stewart, Chief Curator.

Hangama Amiri was born in 1989 in Peshawar, Pakistan and lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut. Amiri received her MFA from Yale University in Painting and Printmaking and her BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She was a Canadian Fulbright and Postgraduate Fellow at Yale University School of Arts and Sciences. She has mounted solo exhibitions of her work nationally and internationally at the David B. Smith Gallery, Denver; Cooper Cole, Toronto; Albertz Benda gallery, New York; and T293 Gallery, Rome.

Audio

Bazaar, 2020

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum · Bazaar, 2020

Hear Artist Hangama Amiri describe her work Bazaar, 2020.

Recess, 2022

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum · Recess, 2022

Hear Artist Hangama Amiri describe her work Recess, 2022.

Reclining Woman on a Sofa, 2022 / Still-Life with Alocasia Plant, 2022

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum · Reclining Woman on a Sofa (2022) / Still Life with an Alocasia Plant (2022)

Hear Artist Hangama Amiri describe her work Reclining Woman on a Sofa, 2022 and Still-Life with Alocasia Plant, 2022

Press Release

Press

“Amiri last visited Afghanistan about 10 years ago, when the Taliban was in retreat. But she said the work for the Aldrich exhibit was mostly done in response to the country’s 'awful collapse' in 2021. Nevertheless, she sees the exhibit as hopeful; 'an amalgamation of childhood memories' deployed in tribute to the resiliency of Afghan women under threat of 'erasure.'”
—CT Insider

“Home is less about the physical reality for a person or a community. It has more to do with feelings and memories that one chooses to carry,” Amiri says. “Since the Taliban seized Afghanistan in 2021, a fundamental question that keeps coming back to me is Where am I even from? Will this homeland be remembered, reconciled, or celebrated the way I remembered? Will I be a forgotten identity?”
—Cultured Magazine

“'As diaspora artists, we are always in search of something that reminds us of home,' Amiri said, standing in her studio in New Haven on a quiet Sunday morning in January. The creation of her large, complex compositions — a laborious process that, in its early stages, involves many pins and pieces of fabric — was also a construction, or a reconstruction, of the self: “I’m pinning and sewing my identity,” she said.”
—The New York Times

Funders

Generous support for Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home is provided by Ellen and Andrew Celli and The Coby Foundation. Significant support is provided by Diana Bowes and Jim Torrey, Sara and Hussein Khalifa, Kristina and Philip Larson, and Michael Sherman and Carrie Tivador. Additional support is provided by Nicole Bray, Mercer Contemporary and the Consulate General of Canada in New York. The catalogue is supported by the Eric Diefenbach and James-Keith Brown Publications Fund and the Lenore G. Tawney Foundation. Production support is provided by the Diana Bowes and Jim Torrey Commissions Fund. Media support provided by Connecticut Cottages & Gardens (CTC&G).

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Join us for Aldrich After Hours in the galleries and Sculpture Garden to celebrate artist Hangama Amiri and the release of her first museum publication on occasion of her exhibition, Hangama Amiri: An Homage to Home.

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Seniors-Only Tour

Join us for this in-person gallery tour of highlighted works from our current exhibitions, guided by Aldrich Educator Holly Lapine, reserved specifically for senior adults ages 60 and above!

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Visit the Museum for FREE the third Saturday of every month. Participate in a Story Time at 10:30 am and an all-ages Discovery Tour of our current exhibitions at 1 pm.

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May 20, 2023 | Third Weekend, Children and Family Programs

Story Time for Kids: Where Butterflies Fill the Sky

Bring your budding artists to The Aldrich for Story Time, in collaboration with the Ridgefield Library! Together, we will explore themes of family and travel by looking at artwork by Hangama Amiri in our galleries and reading Where Butterflies Fill the Sky by Zahra Marwan.

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May 20, 2023 | Third Weekend, Group Tours

All Ages Discovery Tour

Join us for this in-person gallery tour of The Aldrich’s current exhibitions guided by an Aldrich Educator!

May 21, 2023 | Public Programs, The Studio

What We Remember - and Why: A Writing Workshop

Why are some memories "frayed at the edges"? And what can we do to excavate memories we thought were long lost? These are questions we'll consider, inspired by the fabric collages in Amiri Hangami's exhibition A Homage to Home. Join Aldrich Educator Barb Jennes and fellow writers as we plumb the deep well of memory, returning with poetry and prose.

Two textile artworks of an Alocasia plat next to a reclining woman an a sofa lit on a wall in a dark gallery.

May 29, 2023 | Public Programs, The Studio

Art-Making Workshop: The Inside View

Join Aldrich Educator Alanna Fagan as she leads a workshop on exploring interiors. Use paint and mixed-media to depict a favorite room, or rooms, in your life—from the place where you live now, a childhood home, or a place you enjoy visiting.

Related Products

Pre-Order - Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home

Top image: Hangama Amiri: A Homage to Home (installation view: Bazaar, 2020, Courtesy of the artist and T293, Rome), The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, February 5 to June 11, 2023. Photo: Jason Mandella

The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum

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