From my book Window Seat, forthcoming from Ekstasis Editions in Fall 2009

Between 1996 and 2001, the Taliban were in power in Afghanistan, and girls were not allowed to attend school. Following the fall of the Taliban in 2001, many teenage girls, having missed five years of school, resumed their studies at the elementary school level.

Afghans4Tomorrow is a non-political humanitarian organization dedicated to the reconstruction and development of Afghanistan. In March 2007, I traveled to Afghanistan as a volunteer to teach English and take photographs in the Afghans4Tomorrow girls schools.

Child marriage, polygamy and widowhood rites are not strange in my part of the world. This story is my way of giving insight into these practices, which adversely affect womankind.  A bright light of hope emerges at the end of this short story, as the young widow escapes on her late husband's bicycle.

What is Size 0 supposed to be, anyway? Although there are women who are size 0, the fashion industry's coining of the term has psychological implications of nothingness, of not having a size, of not having an identity. And yet, it is still seen as desirable to be thin.

As a mixed-media artist, I combine traditional sewing techniques with newer digital technology to create figurative pieces that reflect on female issues of body image, beauty and identity.

I have photographed food markets in various parts of the world for ten years. Wok the Dog examines those markets and, in the process, different cultures around the world.

This experimental video celebrates the simplest conflicts of being alive. I explore the movement between my body and the city, and how our bodies strive to defy reality and gravity. I set out to discover what is physically possible and what is not. With my small photo camera I took short clips of myself around New York City. The poem came later. In it, I explore how through imaginative and real movement, we can experience life in a different way.

In Greek mythology, Ino committed suicide by throwing herself into the sea. Instead of dying, she was transformed into a sea deity.

In the Norse variant, Ino was known as a firm ruler and a wanderer.

My Ino is Queen of the Earth, endlessly transforming herself while waiting for the war to be over.

People try to distinguish themselves from one another with clothing, make-up, hair styles and jewelry. But do all these accessories just enable people to hide their real selves? Do we ever see the person underneath? What causes a human being to want to hide behind a mask? To what extent are we actually different from one another? If you omit all the things that can be used as a mask, I believe that we are more alike than we are different. Ego just stands in the way.

I want to depict real people, completely stripped of accessories with only their essence remaining. The result is a rollercoaster of emotions. My paintings portray tales full of contradictions. They tell of loneliness and togetherness, doubt and progression, violence and love, openness and hiding, struggle and consolation.

This series of paintings was produced in the context of vast cultural changes. Inspired by the white space, I created 16 contemporary iconic cultural concepts. The titles of the pieces--e.g., The President's Stimulus 2009, Graceful Control and Peace over War--ask the viewer to take a moment and reflect on the world as they know it. The piece Women, Power and Politics: The Madonnas was inspired by and is a direct response to I.M.O.W.'s 2008 exhibition.

I collect objects that later become part of my art: wooden toys, feathers, corks, chopsticks, buttons, beads, hardware, car parts, wire, aluminum cans, a bird nest from a miniature pine forest in Kauai, seashells, and once, a skin shed from a six-foot long snake.

With Panel Series I created small tableau assemblages that speak to each other. I use driftwood to weave the pieces together and I add color to the bleached branches and fist-shaped knots even though doing it feels almost sacrilegious: the driftwood is intrinsically so beautiful.

A call for all of us to remember and cherish Mother Nature.

I have knitted 108 small sweaters by hand to honor the 108 Canadian soldiers (and one diplomat) killed in Afghanistan between 2002 and March 1, 2009. This is an ongoing project and unfortunately, by the time you read this, I will have knitted more sweaters. The idea for this project came from the woolen socks, scarves, and mittens lovingly knitted by women for the troops during the First and Second World Wars.

Wood has the capacity to breathe life into a sculpture and capture the essence of its form. Humaira Abid utilizes the organic properties of this material to give her art a rich delicacy that contrasts with the material's inherent hardness. In Mother and Child, she carves out a large rosebud form with the luscious quality of a real flower. By casting a smaller, inset rosebud out of bronze, Humaira gives Mother and Child added inner strength.