Visiting Thahab works on the level of relation–a kind of call and response–to intervene in public space and confront post-9/11 U.S. imperial anxieties.
Thahab questions the degree of assimilation allowed to muslim bodies x years after 9/11 and forces us to face the specter of fundamentalism, examining how that particular system of belief has overtaken the cartesian worldview. She engages with the representation of the body and the paradox of hypervisibility through absence.
2012 - Present
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Book cover for Sanah Ahsan’s
“i cannot be good until you say it”
The much-anticipated debut collection by the winner of the Outspoken Performance Poetry Prize: a tender meditation on queerness and Islam
2025
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AR/VR : Faiz Ali Faiz at Chicago Cultural Center
iPad, Performance
Performance commissioned for roving art series. I developed an Artificial Reality app using Unity and Vuforia to interact with the interior spaces of the Chicago Cultural Center.
Designer-in-Residence
Athena Center for Leadership
Barnard College, Columbia University
ADDA UX
Athena Center for Leadership
Barnard College, Columbia University
ADDA UX
September 2024 - Present
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Occupancies: Held Together By it’s roots (Turf)
Occupancies explores how individual and collective bodies create, negotiate, and inhabit space. Conceived as a response to the current political climate and to forms of personal resistance against systemic injustices, Occupancies assembles emerging and mid-career artists who use or intimate the physical body as a politicized site to forefront ideas of agency and visibility. While the exhibitions aims do not fit resolutely within the couplet of art and activism, Occupancies engages with the political and historical dimensions of the term “occupy” today. As part of Occupancies, three of the participating artists – eBAY, Intelligent Mischief, and Nabeela Vega – will serve as “Resident Occupants” and occupy the gallery space through ongoing projects, performances, and interventions during the run of the exhibition. Supported, in part, by an Arts Grant from the BU Arts Initiative – Office of the Provost.
Occupancies artists are Indira Allegra, eBAY, Andrea Bowers, Jonathan Calm, Jordan Casteel, Edie Fake, Nona Faustine, Marlon Forrester, Chitra Ganesh, Jonah Groeneboer, Ramiro Gomez, Dell M. Hamilton, Ann Hirsch, Intelligent Mischief (Aisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall), Ellen Lesperance, Tony Lewis, Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art courtesy of the artist Chris E. Vargas, L.J. Roberts, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Shen Wei, and Nabeela Vega.
Occupancies explores how individual and collective bodies create, negotiate, and inhabit space. Conceived as a response to the current political climate and to forms of personal resistance against systemic injustices, Occupancies assembles emerging and mid-career artists who use or intimate the physical body as a politicized site to forefront ideas of agency and visibility. While the exhibitions aims do not fit resolutely within the couplet of art and activism, Occupancies engages with the political and historical dimensions of the term “occupy” today. As part of Occupancies, three of the participating artists – eBAY, Intelligent Mischief, and Nabeela Vega – will serve as “Resident Occupants” and occupy the gallery space through ongoing projects, performances, and interventions during the run of the exhibition. Supported, in part, by an Arts Grant from the BU Arts Initiative – Office of the Provost.
Occupancies artists are Indira Allegra, eBAY, Andrea Bowers, Jonathan Calm, Jordan Casteel, Edie Fake, Nona Faustine, Marlon Forrester, Chitra Ganesh, Jonah Groeneboer, Ramiro Gomez, Dell M. Hamilton, Ann Hirsch, Intelligent Mischief (Aisha Shillingford and Terry Marshall), Ellen Lesperance, Tony Lewis, Museum of Transgender Hirstory and Art courtesy of the artist Chris E. Vargas, L.J. Roberts, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, Shen Wei, and Nabeela Vega.