Global Citizen · 9 hours ago

I Don’t Have a Nationality. Art Is My Identity.

Afghan artist Zia Forogh built a gallery, taught students, and spent nearly a decade making the invisible visible through his art - until the Taliban made staying in Afghanistan a matter of survival. Forced to move repeatedly, briefly detained, and ultimately evacuated in the middle of the night, he arrived in Germany carrying trauma, three children, and an identity that no border could confiscate. "You can drive an artist out of their homeland," he reflects, "but you cannot take away their memories or their voice." What his story quietly reveals is that the deepest forms of belonging are not granted by nations or taken by force - they live in the work a person refuses to stop making. With the support of the Artistic Freedom Initiative, Forogh is painting and teaching again, not despite his displacement, but through it, still asking his audience to pause, feel something, and see the world differently.