niki afsar (they/them) is a nonbinary, iranian-american interdisciplinary artist living and working in the washington dc area.
drawing influences from personal, familial, and cultural histories steeped in poetry and paradox, they experiment with a number of mediums including devised movement and performance; poetry and text; live singing and sound making; and mirror work.
they have shown their work at rhizome dc, transformer gallery, and eye st gallery, among others. these works have included visual art, performances, and facilitated events and workshops.
they have received a number of artist residencies, including at double edge theatre, monson gallery, the nars foundation, and the kimmel-harding nelson center for the arts. they were a 2023 dc wherewithal grantee, part of transformer gallery’s 2024 emerging artist cohort, and a resident artist at red dirt studio in mt. rainier, md. in dc, they split their time between their practice, local organizing, and finding the sacred in the everyday.
drawing influences from personal, familial, and cultural histories steeped in poetry and paradox, they experiment with a number of mediums including devised movement and performance; poetry and text; live singing and sound making; and mirror work.
they have shown their work at rhizome dc, transformer gallery, and eye st gallery, among others. these works have included visual art, performances, and facilitated events and workshops.
they have received a number of artist residencies, including at double edge theatre, monson gallery, the nars foundation, and the kimmel-harding nelson center for the arts. they were a 2023 dc wherewithal grantee, part of transformer gallery’s 2024 emerging artist cohort, and a resident artist at red dirt studio in mt. rainier, md. in dc, they split their time between their practice, local organizing, and finding the sacred in the everyday.
my art and politics are shaped by questions of identity and liberation. i am in the process of developing my artistic practice as a site for reimagination and world-building, with the goal of creating performance and artistic spaces that are collaborative and collective while also specific and personal.
my work explores not only longing but also the lack that persists in my relationships to language and mythologies of identity. these liminal spaces of void are where desire lives. they are essential for change and reinvention.