02 Themselves, Heard

Mariam approaches her work from her lens of a first generation Afghan-German American in the depiction of aftermath into formless landscapes. Using ink and oil, Mariam creates rhythmic blemishes, marks, and streaks to visually represent the sounds of grief. She treats her landscapes as portraits, carriers of scars ensuing from political, psychological, and environmental upheaval. These abstract terrains personify human bodies conjoining with unrecognizable geography to create inseparability between humans and earth. Mariam creates this parallel to mirror what is valued and dissipated and to memorialize our environments and remind us of our shared losses.