Zelikha Zohra Shoja (she/they) is an experimental filmmaker working primarily in single-channel documentary forms. She is a community organizer, gham-koor*, and arts educator living on unceded Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York). Born and raised in one of the largest community of Afghans in diaspora in the Washington metropolitan area, her artistic practice is engaged in geopoetics, personal and collective histories of rupture, communal storytelling, grief-work, and post-memory, or the transmission of memory. Through gestural studies, deep listening, and ephemeral fabric books, she explores how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others. She is a co-stewardess of Stone Soups, a collective meal series throughout Central New York. She holds a BIS in Diaspora Studies from George Mason University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Art Video from Syracuse University.
She has exhibited and participated in screenings at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Goethe Institute (Almaty and Tashkent), Governors Island (New York), Khodynka Gallery (Moscow), The Living Gallery (New York), Millennium Film Workshop (New York), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia), New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), Strangloscope Experimental Video International Festival (Centro Itajaí, Brazil), Worth Ryder Gallery (Berkeley), VIFF Centre (Toronto), among others. Her fabric photobooks were presented at Printed Matter NYABF (2024) and the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (2024).
*Persian for "grief eater"