Zelikha Zohra Shoja (she/they) is an Afghan American moving image artist working primarily in single-channel non-fiction and experimental forms. She is an arts educator and gham-khoor* living/working on unceded Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York) and Piscataway land (Washington, D.C.). Her artistic practice is engaged in geopoetics, personal and collective histories of rupture, communal storytelling, grief-work, and the transmission of memory. Through gestural studies, deep listening, and ephemeral fabric books, she explores how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others. She holds a BIS in Diaspora Studies from George Mason University and an MFA in Art Video from Syracuse University.
She has exhibited and participated in screenings at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Goethe Institute (Almaty and Tashkent), Governors Island (New York), Khodynka Gallery (Moscow), Millennium Film Workshop (New York), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia), New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), Strangloscope Experimental Video International Festival (Centro Itajaí, Brazil), Street Sound System (London), Worth Ryder Gallery (Berkeley), VIFF Centre (Toronto), among others. Her fabric photobooks have been presented at the Printed Matter NYABF (2024) and the Center for Art, Research, and Alliances (2024).
Zelikha is a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Award (2024-25).
*Farsi phrase for "grief eater”
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