Finding Solidarity and Resistance in Collective Mourning

In conjunction with Golnar Adili’s exhibition, To Measure the Emotions of Others, join the artist along with scholar Manijeh Moradian as they lead an event focused on acts of collective grieving. By activating the archive of the Artist’s late-father, Adili and Moradian intend to provide a space to gather in community to acknowledge the current moment. The gathering will be catalyzed by giving voice to letters and notes that appear in the archive along with guest vocalist Mani Nilchiani. This event is open to the public, everyone is welcome.

Golnar Adili (b. 1976, USA) is an Iranian American artist, designer, and educator based in Brooklyn, New York. Adili holds a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Michigan and has participated in residencies with the Rockefeller Foundation for the Arts (Bellagio, Italy), Center for Book Arts (NYC), Smack Mellon (Brooklyn, NY), Fine Arts Work Center (Provincetown, MA), MacDowell (NYC), Ucross Foundation for the Arts (Clearmont, WY), Lower East Side Printshop (NYC), Women’s Studio Workshop (Rosendale, NY), and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Workspace (NYC), among others. Her work has been presented internationally in solo and group exhibitions organized by institutions such as: the Victoria and Albert Museum (London, UK), The Cue Art Foundation (New York, NY), The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD), and the Craft Contemporary (Los Angeles, CA). She is the recipient of major grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, NYFA, and the Jerome Foundation. In 2021, Adili was a finalist for the Jameel Prize, sponsored by the Victoria & Albert Museum and Art Jameel. Her artist books are in over 50 collections, including the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Walker Art Center, Yale University, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library.

Manijeh Moradian is assistant professor of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Barnard College, Columbia University. Her book, This Flame Within: Iranian Revolutionaries in the United States (Duke University Press, 2022) won the 2024 Hamid Naficy Book Award for the best book in Iranian Diaspora Studies from the Association of Iranian Studies and the Center for Iranian Diaspora Studies. The book also received an Honorable Mention for the 2023 Middle East Studies Association Nikki Keddie Book Award. She has published widely including in American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Studies, Radical History Review, Scholar & Feminist online, jadaliyya.com and Meridians. She is a founding member of the Raha Iranian Feminist Collective and a member of Feminists for Jina, a global network which formed in fall 2022 to support the women, life, freedom uprising in Iran.

Mani Nilchiani is a musician and designer based in New York & Mexico. His music weaves sonic landscapes of Iranian microtonal music (Radif) with contemporary expressions. In his practice, he explores the notion of home as an evolving and in-transit memory space to retrace and retell a story of displacement while researching future-facing musical forms. Mani publishes his music in collaboration with international musicians through his project Tan Haw. His debut LP "Roya-ye Mahtâb" is scheduled for release fall 2026. Mani has performed in the United States and international venues such as MoMA PS1, Symphony Space (NY), La Bestia, Aire Libre, and Atea (Mexico City).

Image credit: Courtesy of the Artist.

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

Get App

Host or Publisher Smack Mellon