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Dr. Ghazal Jafari is a territorial scholar, award-winning
designer, weaver, and educator, professionally trained in architecture and
ecological urbanism. She is originally of Persian and Azeri descent and
currently living in voluntary exile in the United States. Her work intersects
spatial and environmental justice, landscape infrastructure, plant knowledge,
feminist liberation, counter-representations, narratives of displacement and
migration, and non-Western spatial discourses. Methodologically, her work combines
scholarship with multimedia, empowered by translation between
languages and various art forms from writing and weaving to visualizations and
animated narratives. Her recent projects and publications include “WOMAN,
WATER, FREEDOM: Climate Justice, Women’s Liberation, and Territorial
Sovereignty in Iran-Iraq Borderlands,” Journal of Architectural
Education 78: Infidelities (2024); Towards A Flora of the Future / La Flora Del Futuro,
traveling multimedia exhibition and symposium (2019-2022); A
BOTANY OF VIOLENCE: Across 529 Years of Resistance & Resurgence,
co-authored book organized as non-linear timeline and including more than 300
photographs and drawings (ORO editions, 2022);
The Quino Treaty / El Tratado
Del Quino, exhibition at 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (2021); LANDSCAPE as RESISTANCE: Pretexts, Subtexts, Contexts in
Struggles for Environmental Justice, open-source online reader (2016-2021);“NO
DESIGN ON STOLEN LAND: Dismantling Design’s Dehumanizing White Supremacy,” Architectural
Design 90 (2020); CONFRONTING COLUMBUS,
open letter, open-source education guide, and archival activism (2019-20); THE MISSING 400: On The Erasure of Women
From The Urban Environment, multimedia demonstration and book (2016-18);
and NEW GEOGRAPHIES 09: Posthuman (2016-18). Ghazal is a
founding co-director of OPEN SYSTEMS / Landscape Infrastructure Lab, a non-profit
501(c)(3) organization dedicated to opening knowledge of complex ecological
challenges and raising awareness about geopolitical conflicts at the
intersection of spatial equity, climate justice, and community
self-determination. Ghazal is an Assistant Professor of Urban &
Environmental Planning at University
of Virginia. Her teaching engages urban ecologies, contingency planning for
shifting climatic and social conditions, and politics of representation.
Regionally, her teaching emphasizes applied knowledge and community empowerment
across the James River region from the Appalachian Mountains to the Chesapeake
Estuary.︎
Selected Talks and Exhibitions: 02 28 2024, “Counter-representation as Practice,” Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México | 10 12 2023, The Larger Landscape Conversation: Whose Land? , Calderwood Hall, Gardner Museum, Boston | 3 4 2022, “Outside Architecture of Alienation,” Anti-Racism Collective Lecture Series: Building Identities, Rice School of Architecture | 3 18 2022, “A Botany of Violence,” Environmental Humanities at Scale, Panel One: Plant Diaspora, University of Virginia | 01 28 - 03 05 2022 Towards a Flora of the Future: An Initiative on Plants, Climate Activism, Territorial Justice, & Liberatory Feminism, University of Virginia School of Architecture (symposium and exhibition) | 5 22 - 11 21 2021, The Quino Treaty / El Tratado Del Quino, exhibition at 17th Venice Architecture Biennale | 4 11 2021, “BROWN LANDSCAPES: Representations & the Making of Other Geographies in North American Design Culture” LABash Conference 2021, Cornell University | 4 1 2021, Regionalism & Dispossession in Iran-Iraq Borderlands,” Space & Place: Critical Mapping and Counter-cartography, The Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, NYU | 3 26-27 2021, “ARCHIVAL ACTIVISM: Notes on Countermapping Violence,” Drawing as Method Symposium, University of Toronto Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, & Design | 8 5 2020, “BETWEEN RIVERS: Landscape and Representation in Global US Civilizing Mission,” Summer Design Institute Lecture Series, University of Virginia School of Architecture.
Made on traditional lands of the Monacan Indian Nation (1676 Middle Plantation Treaty)
©ghazaljafari 2024