Hamrah's Story
داستان همراه
In August 2021 when the US military withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, I was already involved with different refugee networks in Tucson, AZ, where I resided between 2017-2024. I was already volunteering with a youth mentorship program through one of the resettlement agencies in the city. A few months later, there was a surge in the number of Afghan families resettled in Tucson and there was dire need to support them, especially that they were being housed in hotels due to housing shortage. That is when I got to know a young artist from Kabul who was recently resettled in Tucson. She asked me to help her find an artist community and a space that she could make her paintings, not having access to a private room. As we were driving through the desert city, we imagined a space for artmaking and supporting those recently arrived in the city with navigating life and education in America.
Hamrah literally means someone who shares a path with you. We needed a name to pitch the idea, and I took it from a protest song that I used to chant in student movements back in Iran.
همراه شو عزیز
تنها نمان به درد
کاین درد مشترک
هرگز جدا جدا درمان نمی شود
“Come along dear, don’t be alone in pain,
this common pain, will not heal in isolation.”
As a visual artist who enjoys working in solitude, I always wondered how I could expand and stretch my creative practice beyond the studio walls. How can art and imagination exist and transform life outside of academic and art institutions? How can I use what I learn from my drawings and sculptures—reversing figure and background, creating spaces within spaces, spatial overlapping, and playing with boundaries—to create actual real spaces that propose connection amidst tensions, differences, and lack of attachment to a location, nation, or geography?
Hamrah Arts Club was born because of the common desire and longing for a community that most of the youth I met during this time shared. Being forced to relocate to a new country as a child, leaving everything and everyone behind, it was difficult for most of them to reconcile their past lives, the relatives and grandparents left in Syria or Afghanistan with their everyday lives in the sunbaked American West. We started with three people, meeting on Sunday afternoons for open studio time at MOCA Tucson who generously hosted this project from the beginning. As the only adult with a car and driver’s license, I drove us all and we just showed up each Sunday prepared to work quietly together.
By Fall 2022, the program grew to have 15 new participants most of them recent evacuees from Afghanistan, whose education, life plans, and futurity was disrupted by the quick fall of the country. Most of the first Hamrah Arts Club members were in their early 20s, and they moved on to go to college or got jobs. Then their siblings, friends, and neighbors showed up. After each season, some moved on, some stayed and brought more friends on board. We slowly grew bigger, got funding to invite artists and guests. We hired community drivers, paid for art supplies, had youth mentors to support the new members. We made art together, cooked food and ate together, we danced, meditated, and practiced deep breathing. Hamrah became a trans-national, inter-generational, and multi-lingual family. A safe space to share border-crossing and process losing a home while working towards building a future.
For the Hamrah community, food is the language of love and celebration. We remember that the generations before us survived wars and conflicts by coming together for a homemade meal and dancing to smuggled tapes. Hamrah Arts Club centers liberation through collective healing. Together, we practice somatic exercises, mind-body skills, creative writing, and expressive drawing to arrive at a place that we can envision a just future that holds us within.
Hamrah is a space and not a place. It is nomadic by nature and can exist anywhere without attachment to a physical location; like immigrants or refugees, Hamrah is rooted in resilience, respect for life, and belief in a better future. Where at least one person commits to creating space for others on the basis of collective care, joy, play, and imagination Hamrah comes to life.
Hamrah Arts Club is the manifestation of a world built where each individual is worthy to take up space. A world that grows horizontally, where everyone is heard and seen, and their sense of belonging, worth, and dignity is actualized. While at Hamrah Arts Club we regularly organize workshops and art projects, it is the meaningful time together that is prioritized over the product. The space and every minute shared together is the art. Instead of trying to re-create the lost homelands, Hamrah’s gatherings model collective care, where the participants generously share skills, knowledge, and experience, supporting each other with driving tests, finding affordable apartments, tutoring each other in math or sciences, and finding jobs.
Hamrah Arts Club currently operates both virtually and in person at its Tucson chapter.
Nazafarin Lotfi, 2025
Written by Nazafarin Lotfi
In August 2021 when the US military withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, I was already involved with different refugee networks in Tucson, AZ, where I resided between 2017-2024. I was already volunteering with a youth mentorship program through one of the resettlement agencies in the city. A few months later, there was a surge in the number of Afghan families resettled in Tucson and there was dire need to support them, especially that they were being housed in hotels due to housing shortage. That is when I got to know a young artist from Kabul who was recently resettled in Tucson. She asked me to help her find an artist community and a space that she could make her paintings, not having access to a private room. As we were driving through the desert city, we imagined a space for artmaking and supporting those recently arrived in the city with navigating life and education in America.
Hamrah literally means someone who shares a path with you. We needed a name to pitch the idea, and I took it from a protest song that I used to chant in student movements back in Iran.
همراه شو عزیز
تنها نمان به درد
کاین درد مشترک
هرگز جدا جدا درمان نمی شود
“Come along dear, don’t be alone in pain,
this common pain, will not heal in isolation.”
As a visual artist who enjoys working in solitude, I always wondered how I could expand and stretch my creative practice beyond the studio walls. How can art and imagination exist and transform life outside of academic and art institutions? How can I use what I learn from my drawings and sculptures—reversing figure and background, creating spaces within spaces, spatial overlapping, and playing with boundaries—to create actual real spaces that propose connection amidst tensions, differences, and lack of attachment to a location, nation, or geography?
Hamrah Arts Club was born because of the common desire and longing for a community that most of the youth I met during this time shared. Being forced to relocate to a new country as a child, leaving everything and everyone behind, it was difficult for most of them to reconcile their past lives, the relatives and grandparents left in Syria or Afghanistan with their everyday lives in the sunbaked American West. We started with three people, meeting on Sunday afternoons for open studio time at MOCA Tucson who generously hosted this project from the beginning. As the only adult with a car and driver’s license, I drove us all and we just showed up each Sunday prepared to work quietly together.
By Fall 2022, the program grew to have 15 new participants most of them recent evacuees from Afghanistan, whose education, life plans, and futurity was disrupted by the quick fall of the country. Most of the first Hamrah Arts Club members were in their early 20s, and they moved on to go to college or got jobs. Then their siblings, friends, and neighbors showed up. After each season, some moved on, some stayed and brought more friends on board. We slowly grew bigger, got funding to invite artists and guests. We hired community drivers, paid for art supplies, had youth mentors to support the new members. We made art together, cooked food and ate together, we danced, meditated, and practiced deep breathing. Hamrah became a trans-national, inter-generational, and multi-lingual family. A safe space to share border-crossing and process losing a home while working towards building a future.
For the Hamrah community, food is the language of love and celebration. We remember that the generations before us survived wars and conflicts by coming together for a homemade meal and dancing to smuggled tapes. Hamrah Arts Club centers liberation through collective healing. Together, we practice somatic exercises, mind-body skills, creative writing, and expressive drawing to arrive at a place that we can envision a just future that holds us within.
Hamrah is a space and not a place. It is nomadic by nature and can exist anywhere without attachment to a physical location; like immigrants or refugees, Hamrah is rooted in resilience, respect for life, and belief in a better future. Where at least one person commits to creating space for others on the basis of collective care, joy, play, and imagination Hamrah comes to life.
Hamrah Arts Club is the manifestation of a world built where each individual is worthy to take up space. A world that grows horizontally, where everyone is heard and seen, and their sense of belonging, worth, and dignity is actualized. While at Hamrah Arts Club we regularly organize workshops and art projects, it is the meaningful time together that is prioritized over the product. The space and every minute shared together is the art. Instead of trying to re-create the lost homelands, Hamrah’s gatherings model collective care, where the participants generously share skills, knowledge, and experience, supporting each other with driving tests, finding affordable apartments, tutoring each other in math or sciences, and finding jobs.
Hamrah Arts Club currently operates both virtually and in person at its Tucson chapter.
By Fall 2022, the program grew to have 15 new participants most of them recent evacuees from Afghanistan, whose education, life plans, and futurity was disrupted by the quick fall of the country. Most of the first Hamrah Arts Club members were in their early 20s, and they moved on to go to college or got jobs. Then their siblings, friends, and neighbors showed up. After each season, some moved on, some stayed and brought more friends on board. We slowly grew bigger, got funding to invite artists and guests. We hired community drivers, paid for art supplies, had youth mentors to support the new members. We made art together, cooked food and ate together, we danced, meditated, and practiced deep breathing. Hamrah became a trans-national, inter-generational, and multi-lingual family. A safe space to share border-crossing and process losing a home while working towards building a future.
Hamrah Arts Club was born because of the common desire and longing for a community that most of the youth I met during this time shared. Being forced to relocate to a new country as a child, leaving everything and everyone behind, it was difficult for most of them to reconcile their past lives, the relatives and grandparents left in Syria or Afghanistan with their everyday lives in the sunbaked American West. We started with three people, meeting on Sunday afternoons for open studio time at MOCA Tucson who generously hosted this project from the beginning. As the only adult with a car and driver’s license, I drove us all and we just showed up each Sunday prepared to work quietly together.
As a visual artist who enjoys working in solitude, I always wondered how I could expand and stretch my creative practice beyond the studio walls. How can art and imagination exist and transform life outside of academic and art institutions? How can I use what I learn from my drawings and sculptures—reversing figure and background, creating spaces within spaces, spatial overlapping, and playing with boundaries—to create actual real spaces that propose connection amidst tensions, differences, and lack of attachment to a location, nation, or geography?
Hamrah literally means someone who shares a path with you. We needed a name to pitch the idea, and I took it from a protest song that I used to chant in student movements back in Iran.
همراه شو عزیز
تنها نمان به درد
کاین درد مشترک
هرگز جدا جدا درمان نمی شود
“Come along dear, don’t be alone in pain,
this common pain, will not heal in isolation.”
Written by Nazafarin Lotfi
In August 2021 when the US military withdrew its troops from Afghanistan, I was already involved with different refugee networks in Tucson, AZ, where I resided between 2017-2024. I was already volunteering with a youth mentorship program through one of the resettlement agencies in the city. A few months later, there was a surge in the number of Afghan families resettled in Tucson and there was dire need to support them, especially that they were being housed in hotels due to housing shortage. That is when I got to know a young artist from Kabul who was recently resettled in Tucson. She asked me to help her find an artist community and a space that she could make her paintings, not having access to a private room. As we were driving through the desert city, we imagined a space for artmaking and supporting those recently arrived in the city with navigating life and education in America.
For the Hamrah community, food is the language of love and celebration. We remember that the generations before us survived wars and conflicts by coming together for a homemade meal and dancing to smuggled tapes. Hamrah Arts Club centers liberation through collective healing. Together, we practice somatic exercises, mind-body skills, creative writing, and expressive drawing to arrive at a place that we can envision a just future that holds us within.
Hamrah is a space and not a place. It is nomadic by nature and can exist anywhere without attachment to a physical location; like immigrants or refugees, Hamrah is rooted in resilience, respect for life, and belief in a better future. Where at least one person commits to creating space for others on the basis of collective care, joy, play, and imagination Hamrah comes to life.
Hamrah Arts Club is the manifestation of a world built where each individual is worthy to take up space. A world that grows horizontally, where everyone is heard and seen, and their sense of belonging, worth, and dignity is actualized. While at Hamrah Arts Club we regularly organize workshops and art projects, it is the meaningful time together that is prioritized over the product. The space and every minute shared together is the art. Instead of trying to re-create the lost homelands, Hamrah’s gatherings model collective care, where the participants generously share skills, knowledge, and experience, supporting each other with driving tests, finding affordable apartments, tutoring each other in math or sciences, and finding jobs.
Hamrah Arts Club currently operates both virtually and in person at its Tucson chapter.