What does the world look like from a SWANA (South West Asian and North African) futurist perspective? Can we envision a future of mutual support, and a flowering of our diverse and shared SWANA cultures, even in the shadow of turmoil caused by the lingering effects of imperialism on countries from Armenia to Afghanistan to Palestine to Syria? Can we preserve a connection to our ancestors while encouraging the evolution of our societies? This sweeping project imagines the future and envisions creating it, encompassing land back, reparations, ethnic and cultural diversity, ancestral practices, and our shared SWANA culture. In short, SWANA futurism.
Kristin Anahit Cass is an artist working in photography, video, writing, sculpture and other media. Cass’s work imagines the future, touches the past, and envisions a better world. As Lori Waxman noted in New City, her “portraits, of both people and places, are composed with a tender straightforwardness that befits each particular subject. Instead of the aestheticized ruins of disaster porn, moments of human resilience shine through alongside the trauma.” In addition to her arts education, Cass has worked with women and minority-owned businesses, artists, and nonprofits in her career as a lawyer. She is one of the founders of the LGBTQ platform Entanik (Family) where she is active in supporting creatives in the global community. Her work has been shown in solo and group exhibitions including Reparations of the Heart at the Stamelos Gallery Center at the University of Michigan, Witness: The Artist’s Response at Elephant Room Gallery in Chicago, Chicago Neighborhoods at the Hairpin Gallery in Chicago and SLAYSIAN 2.0 at Co-Prosperity in Chicago. Her Borderlands Under Fire project was a finalist for the 2018 Dorothea Lange-Paul Taylor Prize. Cass is a graduate of the University of Chicago. You can find her work at kristincass.com, on Instagram at KristinAnahitCassProjects, on Facebook at Kristin Cass Photography, and on LinkedIn at Anahit Cass
