Mariam Ghani
Competition: 2010 Open RFP
Artist, filmmaker and writer Mariam Ghani has documented the economic and political reconstructions of Kabul from 2002-04, the UAE in the 00s, and post-crash New York in a series of innovative multimedia projects, including an interactive documentary of the Constitutional Loya Jirga of 2003-4. Her videos and installations have been exhibited and screened internationally, at venues including MoMA in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the National Gallery in DC, the Asia Society, the Sharjah, Liverpool and Beijing 798 Biennials, and numerous film festivals. Her public and participatory projects have been presented in Berlin, Amsterdam, Buffalo, Detroit, LA, NYC, and online. Ms. Ghani has been awarded NYFA and Soros Fellowships, grants from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation and the Experimental Television Center, and residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Eyebeam Atelier, Smack Mellon, and the Akademie Schloss Solitude.
Since 2004, Ms. Ghani has collaborated with Chitra Ganesh as Index of the Disappeared, an archive of post-9/11 policies and platform for public dialogue around related issues and ideas. The Index has presented public projects, organized discussions, and installed various iterations of its archive in venues ranging from the UBS corporate headquarters to the Park Avenue Armory to museums, community centers, public libraries, storefront windows, and universities. The Index has published critical texts and print projects in the Sarai Reader, the Radical History Review, the Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Samar, and Pavilion, and has been cited in a number of academic texts, courses and dissertations about the intersections of art, politics and archives. Ms. Ghani has also published critical texts in FUSE, Viralnet, artist anthologies and catalogues. She co-curated the exhibition Conversation Pieces, a survey of emerging public dialogue practices, for CEPA in fall 2009 and edited a 156-page reader of essays and projects by artists in the exhibition.
In addition to her critical and artistic practices, Ms. Ghani has edited policy papers for the Overseas Development Institute and the Institute for State Effectiveness, conducted on-site research for ISE in Nepal, and prepared papers for the Kabul Conference of July 2010. She has a B.A. in Comparative Literature from NYU and an MFA from SVA, and teaches in the Art & Public Policy graduate program at NYU.
About the Project
Primary investigator, Mariam Ghani, along with Dr. Ashraf Ghani, are developing a monograph and policy paper exploring the role of enterprise solutions to poverty in Afghanistan.
Entrepreneurs create products, services and jobs. They expand economies, improve people's lives, provide employment (high and rising wages) and bring about competition. A competitive environment, in turn, gives rise to efficiency, meritocracy and further innovations and entrepreneurial drive.
The potent combination of entrepreneurship and technological innovation can forge an environment that is conducive to further enterprise, involving even government policy in supporting entrepreneurship and innovation.
