Zelikha Zohra Shoja (she/they) is an experimental filmmaker, community organizer, and arts educator living on Onondaga land (Syracuse, New York). Born in a large Afghan community in the metropolitan Washington, D.C. area, her artistic practice is engaged in geopoetics, communal storytelling, grief-work, and post-memory, or the transmission of memory. Through performance, she re-stages and re-enacts moments towards an embodied archive. By playing with touch, deep listening, and emphasizing gesture through moving image, performance, and participatory installations, she explores how collective experiences can be transferred, mirrored, and felt by others. She is a co-stewardess of Stone Soups, a collective meal series throughout Central New York. She holds a BIS in Diaspora Studies from George Mason University and is currently pursuing an MFA in Art Video from Syracuse University.
She has exhibited and participated in screenings at the Aurora Picture Show (Houston, TX), Everson Museum of Art (Syracuse, NY), Goethe Institute (Almaty, Kazakhstan and Tashkent, Uzbekistan), Governors Island (New York, NY), Khodynka Gallery (Moscow, Russia), The Living Gallery (New York, NY), Millennium Film Workshop (New York, NY), National Art Gallery — The Palace (Sofia, Bulgaria), New Wight Biennial (Los Angeles, CA), Rhizome DC (Washington, D.C.), Strangloscope Experimental Video International Festival (Centro Itajaí, Brazil), Worth Ryder Gallery (Berkeley, CA), Vancity Theatre (Toronto, Canada), among others.