And She Made the Moon a Light in Their Midst

       وَجَعَلَ الْقَمَرَ فِيهِنَّ نُورًا

و ماه را در میان آنها نوری قرار داد.

Bahareh Khoshooee and Naz Orakzay
curated by Maryam Ghoreishi

GALLERY EVENT & DISCUSSION
January 14th, 7pm EST | In-person | RSVP

Facing Back and Seeing Forward is a closing public program for And She Made the Moon a Light in Their Midst, bringing together exhibiting artists Bahareh Khoshooee and Naz Orakzay, curator Maryam Ghoreishi, and invited guest Leeza Ahmady, Director of Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF) and Curator-at-Large at Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts (FSA). 

The evening will unfold as a ritual in feeling, approaching the works as living processes—shaped by memory, material, and personal reckoning—opening a shared threshold where making, witnessing, and listening converge, attentive to cycles of return and reflection. 

And She Made the Moon a Light in Their Midst exhibition was seeded by—and in part emerged from—the sustained conversations and relationships cultivated through ACAF Talking Peers: Arts for Afghanistan, a monthly gathering initiated by Leeza Ahmady in 2021 to support artists navigating rupture and resettlement, working beneath different skies yet connected by shared urgency. To open the night, Ahmady will activate the space through grounding practices and sustained presence, inviting a reorientation of the contemporary art compass—loosening its habitual pull toward Europe and North America and tracing resonant currents between Afghanistan and Central Asia, South and Central America, North Africa, and beyond. These are not routes of arrival, but of resonance: pathways shaped by shared histories, aesthetic traditions, and spiritual endurance. 

Join us for an uplifting evening—an invitation to dream a reality where creative abundance moves in many directions.

About the artists:

Bahareh Khoshooee is a multidisciplinary artist, feminist activist, educator, and the co-founder of two collectives –Blockbusters (an international group of New Media artists), and [Redacted] (a network of feminist artists, activists, and technologists). Born in Tehran, Iran, Khoshooee uses time-based strategies in presenting work that fuses 3D environments, video projection mapping, sculpture, performance, and sound. Her practice explores the complex dualities of technology: its oppressive role in surveilling, documenting, and criminalizing BIPOC bodies, and its radical potential for futurity and alternative solidarities. Her work unearths how technology mediates the intimate and collective experiences of grief, violence, and memory, reclaiming these spaces as arenas for liberation, and reimagined futures.
Khoshooee is the recipient of Eyebeam’s Democracy Machine Fellowship and a Skowhegan alumna. She has presented her solo installations at the Dorothy Center for The Arts, Baxter St CCNY, The Elizabeth Foundation for The Arts,The Orlando Museum of Art,and NADA MIAMI 2018 among others. Khoshooee has been included in various group exhibitions including the Honor Fraser Gallery, Latinx Project, Southern Exposure, Museum of Photography Stockholm, and the Museum of Fine Arts St. Petersburg. Her work has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Guardian, Artnet News, The Metro, and The Creators Project. 
baharehkhoshooee.com

Naz Orakzay is a photographer, graphic designer and writer. She received her bachelor in Photography from Kabul University. After graduation, she started working as a lecturer at the Fine Arts Faculty. Currently, she teaches English Literature at Women Online University in Afghanistan.
IG: @naaz.orakzay

About the curator:

Maryam Ghoreishi is an independent artist, curator, and arts administrator based in Brooklyn. Most recently Ghoreishi curated In-between, at The Bridge and Tunnel Gallery, New York, 2023. Other curated shows include The Pleasure of Futile Cycles, by Yasi Alipour, at Twelve Gates Arts, Philadelphia, 2022, Out of Sight, Beyond Touch, at the Center for Book Arts, New York, 2021, Who Really Cares, Cathouse Proper, New York, 2019. She also co-curated Pop-up Exhibitions as part of FIELD MEETING Take 6: Thinking Collections, at Alserkal Avenue, Dubai, 2019, and MAPPING OUT A FIELD, Zanbeel Art, Los Angeles, 2020. Her exhibitions were featured in Special Week of Shows-within-a-Show on Art at a Time Like This and Hyperallergic. Ghoreishi has been collaborating with Asia Contemporary Art Forum (ACAF), working with Afghan artists through ACAF’s Talking Peers program, Arts for Afghanistan since December 2023. She received her B.F.A and M.F.A in Iran and her M.A in Visual Arts Administration from New York University.
maryamghoreishi.com

About Leeza Ahmady:

Born in Afghanistan and based in New York, Leeza Ahmady is recognized internationally for curating exhibitions, festivals, and experimental forums that frame contemporary art as a communal portal for transformative spiritual renewal. As the Founding Director of Programs at the Foundation for Spirituality and the Arts, she develops residencies, retreats, performances, and scholarly works that explore the intersection of art and sacred transcendence. Since 2005, she has led New York’s Asia Contemporary Art Forum, formerly known as Asia Contemporary Art Week—the premier US platform for leading museums and galleries dedicated to showcasing both reputable and lesser-known artists and dialogues from across all regions of Asia, including Central Asia and the Middle East. Ahmady has curated and contributed to programs and exhibitions at the Venice Biennale, Istanbul Biennale, DOCUMENTA, the Guggenheim Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Morgan Library & Museum, and the Asia Art Archives, among many others. She holds a BA from St. John’s University, where she studied theology, philosophy, and art history, and an MA from Pratt Institute. Her graduate research focused on post-Soviet Central Asia, examining the emergence of contemporary art practices alongside the region’s reorientation toward pre-Communist nomadic and Islamic cultural identities.

Ackknowledgements
Penumbra’s Project Gallery is generously supported in part by the Joy of Giving Something.

About the Project Gallery
The 300 square-foot Project Gallery offers emerging and mid-career artists a place to present new work. The exhibitions are developed in conjunction with Penumbra's editorial or educational programming. 

Contact: Lisa di Donato | lisa@penumbrafoundation.org