Sughra Hussainy was born in Afghanistan, orphaned as a young girl, and survived the Taliban’s prohibition on art to a global stage at the Smithsonian. Her medium,traditional Afghan calligraphy and illumination, worked in pigments she grinds herself from lapis lazuli and madder root, is among the oldest living art forms in Central Asia, a direct thread to the great Persian manuscript ateliers of the medieval world, a testament to the resilience and beauty of Afghan culture. Shoshana Stewart, President of Turquoise Mountain, and Sughra Hussainy, one of the most celebrated artists to emerge from Turquoise Mountain’s Kabul Institute, will be in conversation about what it means to practice an endangered art form, what is lost when that practice is interrupted by war, and what it takes institutionally, personally, and commercially to keep it alive and pass it on.
