Shamayel Shalizi

Being Afghan, and the complexities of my identity have always been the backbone of my art. Whether my jewelry and apparel through my online shop Blingistan, or through painting, photography and mixed media projects, it’s at the core of my work. After my father’s untimely death in 2017, I left Kabul behind out of anger [at] the country he loved; that he taught us to love so deeply was the reason he was killed.

After two excruciating years of processing my pain, I was finally ready to move back home to Kabul, when Covid-19 hit. I waited patiently until travel would be allowed again and was in the middle of purchasing my ticket home in June 2021 when my brother advised me to wait until the American withdrawal was completed. Two months later, Kabul fell.

My father is buried in Kabul, my brothers are still in Afghanistan, and there is nowhere I’d rather be right now then back in my own country, just like so many others. Unfortunately, this is not our reality. We must continue our fight for our people’s liberation from afar, through our art, through our activism, through the almost divine love that is deep within every Afghan who has had the pleasure to live under that brilliant Afghan sun. No person wants to be away from their people and land; their culture, their languages, the way of life that is familiar to them. So much of my art prior to the fall of Kabul was centered around dismantling stereotypes of Afghans, questioning audiences, and political statements. I think I will continue this, but with the added element of an intense longing, the longing of missing home, that will only be filled when I can return to my country, drop to my knees and kiss the soil that my ancestors walked before me.