Ahmad Reshad’s practice spans scenography and visual art. A post-master graduate of Pavillon Bosio – Art & Scenography, he was an artist-in-residence at the Ateliers du Quai Antoine Ier  in 2024, supported by the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Principality of Monaco, and artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris in 2025. 

His personal artistic practice—encompassing installation, photography, sound, video, and kinetic sculpture—interrogates the history, power dynamics, and geopolitics of his native Afghanistan. Central to this research is the ever-changing imagery of Afghan flags. He reflects: “What interests me is not their symbolic weight, but their presence as fragile markers—a precarious sign of belonging, endlessly redrawn and instrumentalized by political upheavals. The flag does not appear as a figure of unity, but as an unstable material, carrying ruptures and forgetfulness.”

Through this lens, Reshad exposes the fragility of life and history in a nation marked by over fifty years of struggle. His works have been exhibited in various contexts, including OVNi 2024 — Festival International d’Art Vidéo and the 16th Biennale de Mulhouse.

Committed to preserving endangered aspects of Afghan cultural heritage, Reshad has also reconstructed the traditional “Afghan Box Camera”—a portable black box once used for identity photographs in his childhood. Operating as a miniature darkroom, this nearly extinct tool enables instant image development while standing as a fragile emblem of memory, loss, and resilience.

Qualifications

• Post-master, 2023 - 2025
• • Pavillon Bosio, École Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques de la Ville de Monaco
• DNSEP avec les félicitations du jury, 2021 - 2023 
• • Pavillon Bosio, École Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques de la Ville de Monaco
• Diplôme National d'Art avec les félicitations du jury, 2018 - 2021  
• • Pavillon Bosio, École Supérieure d’Arts Plastiques de la Ville de Monaco

Residencies

• Cité Internationale des Arts, Paris, 2025
• Les Ateliers du Quai - Résidence Internationale d'Artistes, Monaco, 2024 - 2025

Exhibitions

• Système solaire, Village Charlot, Beausoleil - On going
  
• In the wind, Cité Internationale des arts, Paris, 2025
• Mulhouse 025, biennale d'art contemporain, 2025
• Après à voir, les Ateliers du Quai - Résidence Internationale d'Artistes, 2025
• Chambre perdu, OVNi 2024 — Festival International d’Art Vidéo, Nice, 2024
• Parcours d’expositions des DNSEP, Pavillon Bosio, Monaco 2023

Awards & Honors

• Prince Albert II de Monaco
• • Valedictorian (Major de Promo), DNSEP – 2023
• Monaco Project for the Arts
• • Valedictorian (Major de Promo), DNA – 2021

Grants

• SOGEDA – Société de Gestion des Droits d’Auteurs, 2023/25

In the Wind, grew from a restless history. Using archival footages from different periods, the project follows the flag as it moves from hand to hand, flows through crowds, and transforms with each regime—never fixed, never quiet, always in motion.

Here, the weight does not fall on the flag’s vexillology, but on its fragile, shifting nature—an almost-symbol of belonging, constantly redrawn, repurposed, and carried through upheaval. By assembling these visual fragments, In the Wind presents the flag not as a unifying emblem, but as a living archive of ruptures, erasures, and forgotten moments. It becomes a mirror of collective uncertainty, reflecting a nation always in flux, a symbol that moves as much as the people who carry it, always… in the wind.​

Untitled 2 (Afghanistan) explores the intricate tapestry of the country’s political scene, intertwining various art forms. It incorporates a wall adorned with flags from past Afghan regimes, a kinetic sculpture, and a performance.  

In a solemn setting, a rolling mechanism repeatedly covers the Afghanistan flag with dark black paint, accentuating the fleeting nature of successive government upheavals and their deliberate erasure of the past. The artist then transforms this painted flag into a fresh canvas, adding to it  the words "who? where? what?" with a brush. These thought-provoking questions, commonly used as an expression in Persian to confront perplexing situations or distance oneself from unanswered queries, delve into the collective memory and reflect the uncertainty and powerlessness experienced by the people amidst the complex social and political choices that have shaped their lives.  

This series of photographs, titled Whispers in Porcelain, are physical tributes  to both memoirs of home and the intimate facets of Afghan daily life. These captured moments from everyday life in Afghanistan before his exile in late 2017 have come to bear further wait as time passes. By printing these memories onto porcelain, a material that is simultaneously hard and easy to break, these works symbolize the dichotomy of toughness and delicacy born out of existing within a nation grappling with war and conflict.

Here and There, provides a contemplative perspective on Afghanistan's geopolitical landscape. Using pieces of barbed wire, an element introduced to the local landscape as the social and political state of Afghanistan deteriorated. This dynamic map is portrayal of the ever-changing borders of the country.

Constructed by the artist himself, a sculptural object that seamlessly recreates a handmade wooden camera with a self-contained darkroom. Paying tribute to the Kamra-e-Faoree-o-Zaroree that used to be the main apparatuses of visual documentation for the middle and lower class  in Afghanistan. This work’s intention surpasses replication, aiming to revive the traditional Afghan portraiture photography fading artistry and history. Simultaneously this meticulously crafted portable darkroom camera serves as an homage to the artist's childhood growing infront of these cameras and the significance of preserving this tangible personal and generational history and experience. 

Untitled (Afghanistan) powerfully portrays the turbulent socio-political history of Afghanistan and the artist’s relation to it through a kinetic sculpture. This sculpture features three rotating flags, each representing a significant moment in Afghanistan’s history and way of life, irregularly colliding with each other. Each flag in the sculpture corresponds to a distinct historical period: the black, red, and green flag was first hoisted in 1929; the green, white, and black flag was waved by the Islamist factions of the 1990s; and the white flag rose again with the return of the Taliban regime. Through a perpetual and intertwined motion, the movement of the flags underscores the cyclic nature of history and the entangled politics of change that have gripped Afghanistan since the turn of the 20th century. This work is a meditation on the fragility of times, histories and bodies grappled with by the citizens of the country.

Match sticks pile onto a dark brown canvas, muffled sounds pipe, the matches spread out, noises amplify. The screen blackouts, a loud sound vibrates, the central match pile ignites— blackout, another heap burns, the sweltering sound lingers. The picture dims. The extinguished matches rest; one more blackout, just patches of ashes remain, blowing in the wind.

"At times, years of war and flames unite us to the country’s devastation, that there is no gap between fiction and reality, construction and destruction.    These disappointments are not isolated to the war in Afghanistan, yet to the current events throughout the world." — Ahmad Reshad

Ahmad Reshad’s video insulation, “Planétarium,” can be interpreted as the four-decade story of his homeland, Afghanistan—fringe indigenous actors, self-seeking foreign powers, contradictory doctrines, clandestine strategies, all scattered onto the terrain, eventually ignited by natives and outside forces. 

The work invites one to gaze onto the nation’s sprawling, close to half-century tormenting story, leaving one to ponder what spiteful ruse will be implanted next and when will this unfortunate tinderbox ignite again.

Text: https://aftaabmag.com/

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