/ In conceiving the public sculpture Where Lies My Carpet is Thy Home, I narrowed my focus to one audience above all: the men who work at the carpet souk and live upstairs to their shops, with a hope to create a third space and public plaza for relaxation, contemplation, and joy.

This exhibition convenes additional publics, too-so we can think together about how civic narrative is made, how we want our city to be shared, and how artists can potentially produce utopic spaces with, for, and in their own communities. At the center of the exhibition are 8 new kilim tapestries painstakingly handmade with new collaborators - Fatima, Fawzia, Qadria, Tahira, Zahra, Zakia, Ziagul - a weaving circle in Kabul, Afghanistan.

If the carpet souk project was the story of fathers and sons who go away to the Emirates to make a better life at home, then these new carpets route a cartography of return: the gendered labor of mothers and daughters that stands between homeland and diaspora; the global networks of commodity production; and the psychic entanglements that circuit personal history with dreams of homecoming. Throughout, the show is foregrounded by excerpts of conversations, provocations, and questions between me and close friends: mentors, theorists, critics, and partners who consider spatial equity and empathy in their own research.

Proceeds of production support Zuleya, a social enterprise that protects Afghanistan's ancient weaving craft through school education, free healthcare, and sustainable employment.