10:35 mins (2020)

Selected by Centre for Contemporary Arts, Afghanistan

Sajia Sediqi’s work focuses on the traditional views of women’s identity and position in society. From Red to Black and White (2020) was made in one of the psychiatric hospitals in Kabul called ‘Aliabad’. Sediqi used the ruins of the hospital - where severely ill patients were once treated -to examine women’s lives in Afghanistan, which have become more restricted during the pandemic.

However, for many women across the world the political and cultural virus, gender bias and patriarchy virus have quarantined women in the four walls of the house in deprivation of public presence. These women have been forced to use various political and cultural masks for many years.  Every political-military mutation, based on their own ideological and political viruses, has set special masks and conditions for women and Sediqi explores this ‘unseen’ existence in her work.

Sajia Sediqi graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in 1995 and is currently studying at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Kabul University. Sediqi has been working at the Center for Contemporary Arts Afghanistan and the Studio of Contemporary Arts Faculty of Fine Arts for the past two years.