Cultural Artist - Conceptual Anthropologist
Amanullah Mojadidi (AuM)
Jacksonville, Florida USA / Kabul, Afghanistan / Paris, France
MA Honors, Cultural Anthropology: Conflict & Cultural Politics of Identity
BA Honors, Cultural Anthropology: Post-colonialism, Global South Development
I am an Afghan bred-American born artist, researcher, and writer whose work utilizes an experimental ethnographic approach, combining qualitative research, traditional storytelling, postmodern narrative strategies, and mixed-media artworks (often site-specific installations and participative performances) to approach themes such as belonging, representation politics, conflict, healing, emotional history, globalization, and migration; intentionally blurring and merging the lines between fact and fiction, documentation and imagination.
My artwork has been exhibited internationally including the LindenMuseum-Stuttgart, Imperial War Museum-London, Times Square, NYC, Images Biennale-Roskilde, 3rd Dhaka Art Summit, 12th Havana Biennale, 3rd Asia Triennial Manchester, 1st Kochi/Muziris Biennale, and dOCUMENTA (13). In 2012, I was selected as a TED Fellow for the subversively critical nature of my artistic practice while living in Kabul, Afghanistan. I am currently based in Paris, France.
Publications include The Exhibition in The Routledge Handbook of Contemporary Art in Global Asia, TheArt of Conflict Chic: Imagined Geographies & the Search for a Post-Orientalist Identity in Conflict & Compassion: A Paradox of Difference in Contemporary Asian Art, Home and What Can One Say About Living in Kabul? in One Story, Thirty Stories: An Anthology of Contemporary Afghan-American Literature, and Humanitarians with Guns: Globalized Rights, Cultural Space, & Militarized Aid in Afghanistan in Challenges and Paths to Global Justice.
In 2012, I was selected as a TED Fellow for the subversively critical nature of my artistic practice while living in Kabul. I am currently based in France.
Many years ago, when I learned I was going to be a father, I began to think about what I did, and what I didn't, want to pass down to my daughter. As a result, I began to think for the first time about trauma - personal and familial/ancestral - which led me to begin a path of healing that included connecting more deeply with my authentic self, ancestral roots, emotional core, and physical body through different healing modalities and shamanic practices such as tambour voyage rituals and different forms of modified consciousness techniques including chanting, meditation, breath and bodywork, music, dance, and plant medicines. I have subsequently become trained in breathwork, meditation, art therapy, and plant medicine ceremonies (such as cacao) as well as been initiated as a guide and guardian of shamanic trance dance. Over time, this has led to the development of a personal worldview or life philosophy I call "7 Level Living."
7 Level Living
The seven levels of experience can be found in many different forms - including the seven levels of consciousness in Shamanism, the seven levels of being in Sufism, the seven principal chakra portals in our bodies, and even the seven types of migration often identified in the world today.
In my vision of "7 Level Living," I understand the experience as 7 ways of engaging with oneself, others, and the world we are a part of - not in a vertical experience of attainment, but rather a holistic experience of simultaneity. These ways of engaged entanglement can help lead us towards not only a more profound understanding of ourselves and our place in the world, but just as importantly to deeper relationships with people, community, the natural world, and the multiverse to which we are all connected.
These seven levels of living or ways of engaged entanglement are:
CREATIVE - willing to do with originality of thought and imagination through various forms of art and storytelling
ANCESTRAL - gaining knowledge from, and an understanding of, those in our lineage who came before
INTUITIVE - learning to trust that which is spontaneously derived from a natural feeling coming from one's core
CEREMONIAL - living a life of sincerity characterised by ritual and gratitude
CONNECTIVE - being of service humbly as a way to bring together and build community
CONSCIOUS - engaging oneself with integrity to be attentive to oneself, others, and the world
DECOLONIZED - acting to free, and be free of, all forms of oppression to be authentic in all one is and does