For Hangama Amiri, fabric isn’t just a medium, it’s a memory.
“Working with fabric kind of made me much closer to who I was as an artist, as a refugee woman as well, as an immigrant,” she says. “My art is related to a lot of feelings and kind of memories of back home.”
Now an internationally exhibiting artist and a 2025 Sobey Art Award shortlist nominee, Amiri is returning to Halifax, her “second home”, for a public artist talk on April 16 at the Halifax Central Library. The event, running from 7 to 8:30 pm, it is part of a broader conversation around art, community and storytelling, co-presented by the National Gallery of Canada, the Sobey Art Foundation and Halifax Public Library.
Amiri’s work comprises of detailed textile collages, centred on themes of home, migration and the everyday lives of Afghan women. But her journey to this point has been anything but linear.
“I was actually born in Peshawar, Pakistan,” she says. “My parents were still migrating between the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan.”
After spending part of her childhood in Afghanistan, her family fled when the Taliban took over in 1996. What followed was years of movement. Pakistan, then Tajikistan, before finally settling in Canada in 2005.
“It was a very long journey to come here, it wasn’t easy,” she says.
But even through displacement, art remained constant.
Her practice draws from personal archives, family photographs, letters and material fragments, transforming them into intricate visual narratives.
“I’ve always been interested in art, even when I was really young,” Amiri says. In Tajikistan, she entered an art competition supported by refugee aid organizations, and won. Her prize: admission into art school.
“The picture that I painted was very symbolic,” she says. “It was about returning back to Afghanistan in a very progressive kind of scene.”
That early moment set the foundation for everything that followed, from NSCAD in Halifax to Yale University, where she refined the textile-based practice she’s now known for.
“I basically found fabric as my main medium in those two years of highly experimented studio practice,” she says of her time at Yale.
Unlike painting or printmaking, fabric offered something deeper, something tied to identity, memory and her roots.
“There was something very unique about fabric… where I didn’t find that in painting,” she says.
Today, her work reconstructs fragments of everyday life. Still life, interiors, objects—among others—while exploring larger ideas of displacement and belonging.
“The majority of the themes reflect ideas of home, migration, displacement, and also the nuances of contemporary living experiences of Afghan women,” she says.
Nadia Jamal a university student in Halifax will be in attendance at Amiri’s panel discussion. “Her work,speaks to the power of representation, particularly in a time when stories of migration and displacement are frequently reduced or overlooked.”
Jamal admires how Amiri has used her platform to emphasized that representation in art is essential, not only for visibility but for understanding the complexity of lived experiences.
But beyond storytelling, Amiri sees art as a shared space, one that has the potential to connect people across borders and lived experiences.
“I love this idea of sharing back my practice for the community,” she says. “Fabric is a very joyful medium… and it always brings community together.”
That idea of “bringing it back” is part of why this Halifax event matters so much to her.
“Halifax is my second home,” she says. “There wouldn’t be any other better place to be back and introduce my practice to the community that once supported me so much as an emerging artist.”
Still, she’s also thinking about the future, both here and abroad.
“I hope the government could support more the culture and arts in Halifax,” she says. “There’s a lot of diversity… I hope there will be more spaces for us to include our work as well and speak and open new dialogues.”
For Amiri, art isn’t just about representation, it’s about preservation, connection and possibility.
She hope to give back to the community, “ I love this idea of like sharing back my practice for the community. But then vice versa, and I would also learn so much from the students as well. So I kind of, I’m very attracted to that.”
At the upcoming panel discussion, Amiri is expected to reflect on her practice, the role of archives and memory in her work, and the broader importance of art in shaping conversations around migration and identity.
