Amanullah Mojadidi (AuM)
Jacksonville, Florida USA / Kabul, Afghanistan / Paris, France
Biography
Born to lineages of Sufi mystics (paternal) and moderniser kings (maternal), I am an Afghan-bred, American-born seeker with degrees in Cultural Anthropology. My creative practice to date has utilised an experimental ethnographic approach, combining qualitative research, traditional storytelling, postmodern narrative strategies, and mixed-media artworks (often site-specific installations) to approach themes such as belonging, identity politics, conflict, artifactual history, and migration; intentionally blurring and merging the lines between fact and fiction, documentation and imagination.
For the last several years, I have been on a path connecting more deeply with my authentic self, ancestral roots, emotional core, and physical body through shamanism; using various shamanic voyage rituals and different forms of modified consciousness techniques including chanting, meditation, breath and bodywork, music, dance, yoga, psychedelics, and other plant medicines. This has led to a search for “emotional” rather than “intellectual” truth in my artistic work, thereby becoming less interested in the intellectualisation of creation, and rather more interested in “feeling” (at core emotional and spiritual levels) my way through the creative process. My interest in engaging with, and further facilitating, the above mentioned “consciousness shifts” has led me to complete, among others, a training as a Cacao and Plant Medicine Ceremony Facilitator and a Shamanic Trance Dance Guide & Guardian training to take place in the summer of 2021. I continue to further broaden my knowledge and practice through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS) and direct work with a Brazilian shaman.
My artwork has been exhibited internationally including the Imperial War Museum-London, Times Square, NYC, Images Biennale-Roskilde, 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 while I rethink and relearn everything within this multiverse of possibilities called life.
Learning
Jacksonville, Florida USA / Kabul, Afghanistan / Paris, France
Biography
Born to lineages of Sufi mystics (paternal) and moderniser kings (maternal), I am an Afghan-bred, American-born seeker with degrees in Cultural Anthropology. My creative practice to date has utilised an experimental ethnographic approach, combining qualitative research, traditional storytelling, postmodern narrative strategies, and mixed-media artworks (often site-specific installations) to approach themes such as belonging, identity politics, conflict, artifactual history, and migration; intentionally blurring and merging the lines between fact and fiction, documentation and imagination.
For the last several years, I have been on a path connecting more deeply with my authentic self, ancestral roots, emotional core, and physical body through shamanism; using various shamanic voyage rituals and different forms of modified consciousness techniques including chanting, meditation, breath and bodywork, music, dance, yoga, psychedelics, and other plant medicines. This has led to a search for “emotional” rather than “intellectual” truth in my artistic work, thereby becoming less interested in the intellectualisation of creation, and rather more interested in “feeling” (at core emotional and spiritual levels) my way through the creative process. My interest in engaging with, and further facilitating, the above mentioned “consciousness shifts” has led me to complete, among others, a training as a Cacao and Plant Medicine Ceremony Facilitator and a Shamanic Trance Dance Guide & Guardian training to take place in the summer of 2021. I continue to further broaden my knowledge and practice through the Foundation for Shamanic Studies (FSS) and direct work with a Brazilian shaman.
My artwork has been exhibited internationally including the Imperial War Museum-London, Times Square, NYC, Images Biennale-Roskilde, 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 while I rethink and relearn everything within this multiverse of possibilities called life.
Learning
- Ongoing work and explorations with Brazilian Shaman Rudá Iandê
- Upcoming certification training as a Shamanic Trance Dance Guide & Guardian with Shaman/Medicine Woman Zelia Pye
- Upcoming course "Shamanic Journeying for Guidance & Healing: Opening to Love, Beauty, & Wisdom Through Sacred Ceremony & Community with Shaman Sandra Ingerman
- Certified in Art Therapy Techniques for Healing and Self-Exploration
- Certified as a Cacao/Plant Medicine Ceremonialist: Amaruanka Ceremonial Living - Sacred Valley, Peru
- Certified as a Meditation Coach & Facilitator
- Ordained as a Minister with the Universal Life Church
- Certified as a Shamanic Life Coach
- Course "The 5 Ancestral Realms: Activate New Sources of Ancestral Wisdom to Transform Your Life and Lineage" with Shamanic Practitioner Dr. Steven Farmer
- Completed retreat Corps Sacré, Corps Sauvage (Sacred Body, Savage Body) to develop personal power and the capacity to love through an integration of sacred and savage dimensions
- MA Honors, Cultural Anthropology: Conflict & Cultural Politics of Identity
- BA Honors, Cultural Anthropology: Post-colonialism, Development in the Global South
