Noorafshan Mirza

Biography

Noorafshan Mirza is an interdisciplinary artist filmmaker with over 20 years experience in in Artists Film, Expanded Cinema, Analogue Film, Socially Engaged Practice and Political film (Militant Cinema, Documentary & Fiction). They are a Lecturer in the Performance Design & Practice department at Central Saint Martins where they work. Current work: In their own practice Noorafshan is currently making feature films for the gallery (exhibitions) exemplified in their most recent work: The Scar about state enforced disappearance. The exhibition launched at HOME in Manchester followed by Delfina in London (2018). The feature film “Ruptures” launched in Autumn 2019 at the London Film Festival. Exhibitions and video works: Between 2008 and 2016 Noorafshan Mirza’s art practice was framed as a fictional institution. This ‘Museum of Non Participation’ sought to confront (non) participation as a neoliberal condition and a threshold— between forms of resistance and forces of oppression. As part of the Museum of non Participation, Mirza and their long term collaborator Brad Butler made multiple works that they called ‘Acts’ including Deep State (2012) - a science fiction-inflected protest "training film”, Hold Your Ground (2011) a video conceived as a form of protest in Canary Wharf Tube Station and the installation The Unreliable Narrator (2014) on political intimacy, terrorism and the condition of permanent emergency. Socially Engaged Practice: Launched with Artangel in 2009, The Museum of non Participation situated itself as a museum without walls, inspired by its founders experiences moving between their home in Bethnal Green and the city of Karachi in Pakistan from 2007-2009. The resulting ‘socially engaged practice’ from 2007-2016 included interventions, newspapers, wall chalking, reading groups, language exchange, performance lectures, audioworks, walks, political theatre, and Speech Acts. The Museum launched in London in a space behind a barbers shop on Bethnal Green Road where Mirza & Butler hosted a space for language exchange between Urdu and English Speakers. A newspaper collecting a multitude voices on this project was published as a supplement in collaboration with one of Pakistan's largest media grouos: the Daily Jang. The Museum culminated in 2016 in a solo exhibition at the Sydney Biennale.: ‘The Embassy of non Participation. Expanded Cinema and Analogue Film: Prior to 2008 works by Noorafshan Mirza included structural films and expanded cinema works including: Non Places (1999), Where a straight line meets a curve (2003) and the Space Between (2005). From 1998-2018 Noorafshan was a co-director of the artist film lab no.w.here through which they ran hundreds of workshops and film screenings. no.w.here re-invigorated the analogue film equipment formerly from London Filmmakers Co-operative and The Lux Centre re-establishing and making available 16mm and super 8 equipment, training, processing and film techniques in a building in Bethnal Green. Longer term research projects supported the space including The Free Cinema School and Implicated Theatre created with the Serpentine Galleries Center for Possible Studies, Experimenta Indian Film Festival in Mumbai, the Cinema of Prayoga at the Tate Modern, the no.w.here summer school, the Measures Lecture Series and the Artist Film Publication: Sequence.

Noorafshan’s current research takes the form of dialogic praxis with Sydney based artist Priya Panchalingam. They travelled through the sub-continent in 2019 from Sri Lanka, South and North India to Pakistan, taking each other to their places of longing belonging and ancestry. They formed a collective practice in 2020 called [sista_subjex]. [sista_subjex] is made up of two souls, reaching across three continents, with one mission towards decolonial liberation, daughters of diaspora in creative communion. [sista_subjex] explores a kinship of values, shared subjectivities, intimacies of difference, creative potency through collaborative praxis; all in service of the cultural needs for everyday survival and ancient revival : weaving together their art-magic practices of moving image, sonics, textile, wearables, installation, performance devising, club nights and holding space for gathering. [sista_subjex] etches a record of radical presence.