As part of the group show, Psychic Geograhies, Urban Video Project is pleased to present Mariam Ghani’s Landscape Studies: New Mexico.

About the Work
Landscape Studies: New Mexico
2008-2010
Total Run Time: 10:07

Mariam Ghani describes Landscape Studies: New Mexico, shot at various locations in the ruggedly beautiful and damaged New Mexico landcape, as “a sort of abstracted pilgrim’s progress through the region’s strange histories of exploration, conquest, revolts, rodeos, missile tests, film shoots, truck stops and participant ethnography organized by Pueblo Indian theories of the meanings of colors, clouds and directions.”

Dramatic weather patterns linger at the edge of these big-sky landscapes. On a smaller scale, human figures move through them striking curious poses, their movements intentionally unnatural in these “denatured” vistas. The piece is the result of a collaboration with choreographer Erin Ellen Kelly, with whom she often works.

Credits:
Shot and edited by Mariam Ghani, choreographed by Erin Ellen Kelly, conceived and performed by Kelly and Ghani, score by Qasim Naqvi, sound mix by Andrew Munsey.

About the Artist
Mariam Ghani is an artist, writer and teacher based in Brooklyn. Her research-based practice operates at the intersections between place, memory, history, language, loss, and reconstruction. She has been awarded the NYFA and Soros Fellowships, grants from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, CEC ArtsLink, the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Experimental Television Center, and residencies at LMCC, Eyebeam Atelier, Smack Mellon, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. Her work in video, installation and photography has been exhibited and screened internationally, including at dOCUMENTA (13) in Kassel and Kabul, the Sharjah Biennials 9 and 10, the 2005 Liverpool Biennial, the Beijing 798 Biennial, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery in DC, the International Film Festival Rotterdam, CPH: DOX in Copenhagen, transmediale in Berlin, Futura in Prague, Curtacinema in Rio de Janeiro, EMAP in Seoul, d/Art in Sydney, and Bodhi Art in Mumbai. Her public and participatory projects have been commissioned by Creative Time in New York, CEPA in Buffalo, the Arab American National Museum in Detroit.

For more information about Ghani’s work, visit the artist’s website: kabul-reconstructions.net/mariam

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