Zelikha Zohra Shoja is an Afghan American artist and filmmaker working primarily in single-channel non-fiction and experimental modes. 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, 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.
Her films have screened at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Goethe Institute (Almaty and Tashkent), Millennium Film Workshop (New York), silent green Kulturquartier (Berlin), VIFF Centre (Toronto), among others.
She has exhibited at Governors Island (New York), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia), New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), Worth Ryder Gallery (Berkeley), among others. Zelikha is a recipient of the Fulbright U.S. Student Award (2024-25).
*Farsi phrase for "grief eater”
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