Zelikha Shoja received the 2026 UVP Regional Commission for her proposal In Search of Bluer Tongues (working title). In 2021, Shoja planned to shoot a new film at the site of her maternal home in Kabul, Afghanistan, but due to the return of the Taliban and ensuing violence, the project could not be realized. The work’s title references a personal memory: a grandmother and granddaughter playfully stick out their tongues at one another, stained blue with candy.

In Search of Bluer Tongues reimagines the domestic scenes Shoja hoped to play out in Kabul, working instead with members of resettled communities in the city of Syracuse and around New York state. The resulting piece is an act of collaborative memory-making and a meditation on the diasporic experience of longing to be in a place that can only be watched from afar.

About the Artist

Zelikha Zohra Shoja is a U.S.-based Afghan artist, researcher, and غمخوار / gham-khoor*  living and working on unceded Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York). Her work is engaged in geopoetics, ecologies of interdependence, and the transmission of memory. With an academic background in migration and diaspora, she works with moving image, ephemeral fabric photobooks, and gestural studies to explore how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others.

Her films and art have participated in international and national microcinemas, film festivals, and institutions including Friche la Belle de Mai (Marseille), Goethe-Institut (Almaty and Tashkent), Kunsthalle Exnergasse (Vienna; upcoming), Millennium Film Workshop (New York), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia), New Wight Gallery (Los Angeles), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), silent green Kulturquartier (Berlin), VIFF Centre (Toronto), among others.

Most recently, Zelikha is a recipient of the 2024-25 Fulbright U.S. Student Award pursuing creative research in Tajikistan and Türkiye.

*غمخوار / gham-khoor means “grief eater” in Persian

Artist’s website: zelikhashoja.com