ost recently, the horrific shooting of a Pakistani schoolgirl eclipsed the familiar images of burning American flags as citizens in many Muslim countries protested the shoddily-crafted film made in the U.S. mocking the Prophet Mohammed, an event followed in short order by demonstrations targeting the French, in the wake of the publication of cartoons, also denigrating the Prophet in the French magazine Charlie Hebdo.

This most recent outpouring of rage and violence has once again brought to the surface issues that have long-divided extremists in the Arab world and those in favor of free speech in the West.

And of course just under these immediate stories that have sparked the current unrest — lie the additional, and fundamental issues of gender, religion, culture still un-resolved after centuries and explored in the work of Afghan-born, American raised Samizay.

Represented by Lawrie Shabibi Gallery in Dubai — a fitting place for this artist standing smack at the intersection of the cultures of East and West — Samizay spoke to me — at the close of her first solo exhibition im/pure — from her home in Los Angeles about how her art is both personal and political, and how she is in a constant state of awareness regarding the fine line between critiquing stereotypes of women: both Afghan and American, and perpetuating them.

The show, which brought rave reviews, was a logical extension of many of the themes that Samizay has addressed throughout her still nascent career: The title,  im/pure, is based on one of the pieces in the show,  a video in which  one sees a woman in a white skirt, but by utilizing reflection it also fluctuates back and forth and in some cases looks white and in some, black.

Samizay explains, “In the work I am trying to show images which evoke thoughts regarding the complexity of identity. In my work in general, women are often wearing white. I use that color to represent purity. In this video I use white to represent what the woman shows to the outside world, and I use black to represent the psychological/ internal side of woman, and perhaps as a symbol of grief”.

“In another piece called Ravel — not in this particular show — I film a woman all in black. The setting is open desert landscape — a  barren landscape, and I use that in order to evoke a psychological space that chronicles the journey this woman travels to rid herself of lost hopes and dreams and past griefs”.

When asked about the ambient sound in her work, she replies: “Every video I’ve done has had sound, but usually just ambient tones, not music or a soundtrack. That is important to me because I don’t want something like music to “ease the tension”. I want the video to place the viewer in a state of tension and anxiety, and to make them really sort of “sit with” the work, disturbing as it might be.

As our conversation moves from a discussion of the current show, and meanders through a variety of fascinating topics, I am struck by how articulate, thoughtful — and to use a hackneyed term: “evolved” Samizay is as an artist at such a young age. (She was born in 1981!).

Although she has been making art since she was a child -“My mother recently found some drawings I had done, caricaturing different members of the family,” she tells me. She has recently, really come into her own, gaining favorable reviews, and respect from the international art community for her primarily video-graphic work.

Perhaps the reason that Samizay stands out amongst the many young artists, who utilize themes referring to their Middle-Eastern heritage, or are overtly political in their approach, is that Samizay is extremely cautious to avoid falling into the trap of creating work primarily for the appetites of the commercial market — a particularly seductive thing especially in light of the now sort of “trendy” art, sparked by Arab Spring – or over-simplifying the extremely complex issues that she treats in her work.

“People think that I am some kind of spokesperson or representative of Afghan women,” she tells me. “Which is actually kind of funny, as I grew up in Pullman, Washington, in a small town in the eastern corner of a U.S. state on the west coast of America, about as far from Afghanistan as you can get, both culturally and geographically. And, we moved to the States when I was three years old”.

Reflecting on her background, she tells me a sadly, familiar story.  “We. My Mom, Dad, elder sister and I, left Afghanistan in 1981 at the height of the Soviet Invasion — really as a matter of survival. My Dad was a professor of architecture and the political climate was not friendly to educated academics, and the situation was getting more intense and threatening with the Soviet presence.  When we first moved, I was just a baby, and we lived in Paris for a few years, then we moved to Washington D.C for until my father got a position as a professor in Pullman”.

When asked about her upbringing as a Muslim in a small parochial town in the U.S., she thinks for a moment, and then answers. “I think truthfully, my memories of being Muslim have more to do with how a child feels different, than how I now understand religion as an adult. “I remember wondering why everyone celebrated Christmas and why we didn’t, and things like that, but because my parents considered their religion more of a personal choice than a social one. And because a Muslim can pray at home, or pray in a Mosque, it was not really the predominant issue regarding how we all acclimated”.

There was a mosque in our town, and we would go for special holidays.  I remember feeling very out of place and nervous as everyone was speaking Arabic, which we don’t speak. It was a different level of not fitting in. I didn’t quite fit in with the Christian Americans and I didn’t fit in with the Muslim Americans because of their varied cultural backgrounds.

So how, I ask her did she come to make art that deals with the roles of women in the Middle East, Muslim women, and in the U.S., predominately secular or Christian?

“It all came as I grew up and went to University and Graduate School and began to grapple with so many of the mixed messages and fragmented memories that my parents would share with me.  I never had an epiphany where I decided, AHA, I am going to be a political, or a Feminist artist — and as I researched other artists from the MENASA region, I was not unaware of the fact that if I was to shoot photographs of myself veiled and naked, I would perhaps be more commercially desirable.  For me it was, and remains, a highly personal journey”.

This is, at the heart of it, what makes Samizay’s work important and what gives it an inherent integrity.  Rather than making videos or shooting photographs in which she is trying to send a clear-cut message regarding women and their roles, her work is, as she puts it, “Always autobiographical. Of course these issues come into it, but I get around the conundrum many artists face who maybe are trying to satirize or critique stereotypes, yet end up perpetuating them, by keeping my work extremely personal.  And my personal experience, is my personal experience, and is filled with idiosyncratic detail, which I think saves it from being stereotypical”.

“My female protagonists are never just victims,” she continues. “Although there may be an element of that, I try to give these women some agency and cause in the matter, in order to question the decisions that they make.  Of course I cannot ignore that there are cultural and social expectations that color these decisions and the way that they carry themselves, but if it comes from the metabolization of my memories, it always has to be ‘real’ ”.

Samizay’s mother, is, not surprisingly, central to her work. “My mother is really an amazing person,” she tells me. “She is constantly evolving and changing her views.  I created a video, called 9,409 Miles, which is really an homage to my parents, as it refers to the exact number of miles it took to get from Kabul, to Paris, to DC, and then to Washington State.  It is about how the trauma of dislocation can effect inter-personal relationships. What is amazing is that it was the process of creating the video that made me understand and appreciate how extraordinary my parents were to leave their family, their homeland, really everything and raise us in such an unfamiliar culture.  Despite the effect of that trauma on their daily lives they made something out of nothing”.

“I went back to Kabul for the first time in 2005 with my Mother and Uncle,” she recounts. “ And it was a tremendously moving experience, but also very sad.  They couldn’t believe what the City had become — so dirty and tired after the wars.  They remembered birds chirping, and trees from their childhood.

“They also commented on how different the people had become, without access to education.  It struck me that these Afghans’ view of the world was so different from the world-view that my parents hold, because of the generational and educational difference.

“This is in no way, meant as a criticism,” she concludes.

“If you never have a home, and you never know when you will have to leave again, it is difficult to think beyond just survival.  Kabul is overcrowded and without access to basic things like clean water or a sewage system. Of course people are frustrated and concerned about how they can make ends meet. The burqa was not an issue, as I had naively assumed, for the women I spoke with They were rightly more concerned with whether or not their husbands would find a job and if their kids would have enough to eat” ab