Gazelle Samizay

Compassionate Exclusion is an immersive escape room–style experience that places participants in the role of a family attempting to flee a fictional country in crisis. Modeled on the barriers Afghans faced during the 2021 U.S.–NATO withdrawal, the game asks players to navigate opaque bureaucracies, shifting political conditions, and systems that decide who is allowed to escape—and who is left behind.

Beyond puzzles and physical interaction, participants must rely on outside contacts for assistance, mirroring the precarious networks that displaced people depend on in moments of emergency. With multiple possible endings, each decision carries weight, revealing how chance, access, and power shape survival within the U.S. immigration system.

The Ink of Identity: Rereading Afghanistan emerged from a desire to critically engage with and disrupt prevailing narratives in the San Francisco Public Library's collection of books on Afghanistan. Delving into the extensive collection, dating back to 1762, I explored the complexities of Afghan identity and the impact of Western-authored literature on the understanding of Afghan history and culture, with a particular focus on Afghan American perspectives.

I presented select library books to Afghan Americans, prompting responses and reflections. The material, some of which was unfamiliar to the interviewees, sparked questions about their own identities and lineages. In the process, they also shared intimate personal and familial stories. The conversations captured a sense of distance from their homeland, not only geographically but also temporally, as the interviewees explored aspects of Afghanistan that have been lost over time.

In a library archive predominantly dominated by non-Afghan voices, The Ink of Identity seeks to reestablish the presence and perspectives of Afghans within the archival space. It strives to challenge preconceived notions and reshape the understanding of Afghanistan, inviting viewers to critically evaluate the discourse on Afghanistan, while reimagining the archive.

Please contact me if you are interested in exhibiting this project at your own library.

With/Draw is the first chapter in the project Chelah: 40 Years Later, which unpacks the cyclical, complex experience of evacuating at-risk Afghans almost exactly 40 years after my family's own departure from Afghanistan.

The installation uses messages exchanged between myself and an Afghan artist who requested help to escape from Afghanistan in anticipation of the U.S. withdrawal and a Taliban takeover. These are layered with links and information the artist and others shared with me during this period in order to find a way out. Their names have been replaced by their professions for anonymity.

Text message transcripts between myself and the artist are written on the gallery walls, but will be erased at the end of the exhibition, reflecting on the invisible labor of so many in the Afghan diaspora who have been working tirelessly to evacuate at-risk Afghans in spite of a negligent and purposely inaccessible state apparatus, illuminating the mundane and tedious brutalities of the US immigration system.

Bi-Lingering is a participatory art project that explores the power of language and the experience of living between cultures. Centered on the in-between space of belonging to multiple languages, the project examines how memories—whether joyful, painful, or ordinary—can shift in tone, meaning, and emotional weight depending on the language in which they are expressed. Through letter writing, Bi-Lingering invites participants to slow down and reflect on how language shapes identity, intimacy, and self-understanding.

The project takes the form of workshops and letter-writing kits, inviting multilingual individuals—at any level of proficiency—to engage with thoughtfully designed writing prompts. Participants are encouraged to write without concern for fluency or correctness, fostering a nonjudgmental space where imperfection is welcomed. By sharing, exchanging, or simply holding these letters, Bi-Lingering creates opportunities for connection, reflection, and collective recognition of the complexities and richness of multilingual life. As a thank you, participants receive a limited edition art card.

Created in collaboration with Labkhand Olfatmanesh.

To participate or for more information, visit https://www.bilingering.com/

Khat-e Penhan / Hidden Line explores the tension between self-expression and the pressures and rewards of finding acceptance through the eyes of an Afghan American girl. Finding herself in a surreal landscape, the girl follows a mysterious green ribbon to a gathering of masked, uniform figures--her elders. These figures, their masks marked with Farsi calligraphy denoting Afghan and American status symbols, hurl judgments on her in the form of black ribbons expelled from their mouths, entangling her and preventing her escape. She finally agrees to their demand that she wear a mask. The ribbons disappear and she is able to see the figures as they see themselves, distinguished and eloquent. She joins their dance, but finds even this is not enough to satisfy their demands.

Employing the common cultural reference of hopscotch (named "lay lay" in Iran and "joz baazi" in Afghanistan), the artists explore the universal struggles that girls face as they grow into adulthood. The character relives the personal and political moments of her past, such as war, marriage, generational trauma, and gendered social expectations. The particularities of their experiences as women of Afghan and Iranian heritage fed the artists’ collaboration, though Gazelle Samizay grew up in the US and Labkhand Olfatmanesh grew up in Iran, allowing them to create a universal story rooted in specific cultural intersections.

This series includes the 4-channel video My shadow is a word writing itself across time and the book A guest in a ghost’s home. Manzanar, CA is ghosted by a history of oppressive tactics, from the extraction of the Paiute Indians, diversion of water to urban Los Angeles, and the incarceration of Japanese Americans. The landscape also evokes my birthplace of Afghanistan.

While previous projects explored Carl Jung’s unconscious “shadow self” on a personal level, this project looks at the collective shadows of the U.S., confronting the grief, anger, and betrayal embedded in the land beneath our feet. What is denied does not disappear; what is buried must surface. What would it take--and what would it mean--for the U.S. to face its shadows?

Home is an idea as much as it is a physical structure, transcending borders and generations. “Wazir Akbar Khan,” a neighborhood in Kabul whose name my father, Rafi Samizay, adopted to refer to the home he designed and built in Afghanistan, has been a part of the collective family imagination for as long as I can remember. Its contemporary design has evoked both awe and nostalgia at the painful memory of abandoning it to flee Soviet occupation.

As a structure that has bared witness to an aspiring architect, an elite Western German diplomat, a group of resisting Afghan women seeking sanctuary, religious fanatics during Taliban rule, and finally the surveillance station of the American intelligence agency, this house reflects the anguish of a country who became the battleground of superpowers, and whose indigenous population has paid with their blood for the vanity of outsiders. 

There were many others who by chance, desire or decree, left a trace in this house. An uncle planted a grapevine hoping that someday he would sit under its shade and have tea with his brother, but soon fell victim to a night homicide. A sister gifted her walnut tree, dug out from her own yard, because they were difficult to come by. A university colleague brought trees from his village north of Kabul to memorialize his friend’s house, but vanished a week later. Then there was the East German former history professor and UNESCO high official, who discretely visited my father. Disturbed by the policies of the government in power and its foreign backers, his fate was not too different from local Afghans and his free thinking cost him his job and detention in his country.

My father and I collaborated to create a model of this house, and in the process, I uncovered new stories about our life. I saw him, with excitement and anticipation, rebuild the room where my sister slept as a child, and the window he sneaked through to snoop on Soviet activity next door. I realized that the greenhouse he had appended to our house in Pullman, WA was not novel, but the successor to a floor-to-ceiling glass room on the façade of “Wazir Akbar Khan.”  Upon looking at the small-scale version of her home, tears welled up in my mother’s eyes, a previously absent expression in regard to her memories of Afghanistan. Finally, I saw my 8-year-old nephew look, with glee and fascination, through the round circles of the courtyard, a defining design element of the house. It was as if this collaborative artistic process created a space to pass and process grief, allowing the next generation to simply admire its design, unmired by the melancholy and weight this structure has carried for the rest of us. 

Buildings have feelings. They are formed not only by their human creators, but by those that come into contact with them. They express the spirit of their time, whether that is joy or scars. This house, in a corner of Kabul, bears as much the burden of history as the humans that surrounded it.

Ravel is a symbolic story set in a desert landscape with only a lone woman and tree interrupting the endless dunes. Adorned with glass vessels, the woman drags them through the sand behind her. A tree holds them out of reach on its branches, relics of unfulfilled hopes and dreams hanging in limbo between creation and completion. Although seemingly empty, the glass vessels are her burden, trailing behind her as she finds her own way.     

im/pure shows the ambiguous, transformative space of self-creation. A woman stands in water looking at her reflection. At times it reflects her outward appearance, the ideal perfect, pure woman, while at other times, it reflects her inner psyche, one that is marked by grief, shame and guilt. In between, there are fragments of both selves represented as one identity morphs into another in a continuous cycle.

The ephemeral quality of the image illustrates the fluid and fragile nature of one’s identity or sense of self.

In a bittersweet extrication, a woman "cleans house" by casting away relics that have defined her womanhood--broken expectations of love and rigid standards of female purity.

Several women collectively embroider the wedding dress of a young bride as she wears it.  Each stitch symbolizes one piece of advice she is given.  Individually, the threads are very delicate, but amassed together their strength becomes visible, symbolizing the powerful, yet complicated bonds between the women in this family.

In an effort to escape her marital problems, a woman preoccupies herself with washing a seemingly clean bed sheet. Constrained by cultural stigmas and pride, she will not leave her husband. However, all the past memories of the relationship metaphorically seep out of the sheet. Soon, she feels the burden of keeping silent, and realizes that she is complicit in her own misery. Instead of escaping her problems, she is consumed by them, until they render her powerless.

Over the past forty years, millions of Afghans have fled their homeland, living as permanent guests in countries around the world.  Their new homes are at once a blessing and a painful reminder of what was lost.  In 9,409 miles the viewer watches an architect, who, after leaving Afghanistan more than 30 years ago, is still longing for the house he built and was forced to leave.  The impact of dislocation is also felt by his wife, whose efforts in creating a new home will never be enough.  Absorbed in recalling the memories of his old house, the architect pays no heed to his wife preparing him breakfast.  However, the architect’s ruminations are abruptly interrupted, signifying the futility of clinging to a home that only exists in his imagination.

In Nosh-e Jan (Bon Appetit) the viewer is invited to witness the ritual of passing and consuming secrets within an Afghan-American family.  The ritual serves as an outlet of expression for the women that bear secrets, without violating the strict code of keeping face.  Though the secrets are shared in three different languages (Pashto, Dari, and English), the secrets transcend the generational divides of an immigrant family. While the women are the main transmitt

Stereotyping the Asian Feminine explores the definition of 'stereotype' as the repetition of an image. Given that television and films are merely a string of still images moving at a fast rate, they are a perfect medium for creating and disseminating stereotypes. My intent was to take a look at stereotypes as a whole, including different groups of people. I started by taking photos of various movies from the 20th century, double and triple exposing the film. Unfortunately, I was overwhelmed by material and had to narrow my focus to Asian women. As I watched the films, I saw that the stereotype of Asian women could not exist on its own, and was defined vis-à-vis other groups, such as Asian and white men. These stereotypes were further defined by the political climate of the time, namely World War II and the Cold War. Asian men were portrayed as evil, mischievous and “feminine” in comparison to “masculine” white men. Asian women were portrayed as vamps, sexual, exotic and at the service of strong, white men. As time has passed, elements of these stereotypes have changed while others have remained the same. Stereotyping the Asian Feminine questions what stereotypes are being created every minute in millions of homes across the nation. The exhibit also begs the question: Is the media creating these stereotypes or merely reflecting the attitudes of our society?

I went to Afghanistan because it had been a mysterious place for many years to me. I was born in Kabul, but my family left a few months after I was born. My whole life I heard stories about how amazing Afghanistan once was--how peaceful it was. I saw pictures and it was impossible for me to imagine that the same Afghanistan I saw on the news was the same one my family was raised in.

After the US invasion I didn’t know what to make of the whole situation. I knew that removing the Taliban was a positive thing, but I was tired of seeing the same old tired images of Afghanistan on the news—the reel of Osama Bin Laden operating his training camp as his soldiers climb monkey bars and fire Kalashnikovs. I knew there was more to Afghanistan than that one–sided image.

I decided to see what Afghanistan was like for myself and tell my friends back home what I saw. They say people fear what they don’t know, and my intention was to show that there’s more to Afghanistan than Osama bin Laden. I wanted to show that like many Americans, Afghans are just trying to get by, to have a family, to send their kids to school, and to see their grandchildren born. In that sense, I hope that this show will create a little more understanding between these two distant countries.