The first decade of my life I spent talking to trees and growing them as extensions of my own limbs. I made dolls and invisibility cloaks from broken rhinestones, spit, dirt, and wisps of hair. I obsessively collected rocks and obsidian arrowheads. I raced satin kites across the vast desert sky. I was born a magician, trained extensively in khatak dance, ESP, sword fighting, and speaking in tongues to animals and aspen trees. I was a desert pirate and plundered sparkly things. I believed I was a constellation and was devoted to all things related to spoons.
In adolescence I chased UFO's, stole cars, and challenged the existence of good and evil. I aspired to be a poet of shape, sound, and color. I also managed to drop out of high school and made a lot of somethings out of nothing. When I wasn't preoccupied with building crystal forts and fiddling with laser beams, I received my BFA in Photography from the College of Santa Fe. I was compulsive about telling the stories of languages in which I was not fluent.
In an effort to merge my worlds and make sense of the various boxes I was trying to break out of and climb into, I sold most of what I owned and moved to Central America where I received my MA from the United Nations University for Peace.
I'm still building and breaking boxes.
Since then, I've had the true privilege of dreaming and creating a spectrum of audacious projects with renegades, vagabonds, and institutional fuck-up's.
My perspective is influenced by superstition and the supernatural, nostalgia and dreams, and the triviality and apocalypse of our times.
I'd like to jump trains for several months, perfect the art of lucid dreaming, build a treehouse with my love, and become an animal communicator.
I'm still attempting to bend spoons with my eyeballs.
Post Script
Sadaf Rassoul Cameron is a first-generation Afghan American artist who uses photography, words, and time travel to document and express a post-apocalyptic narrative. In 2021 her work was shown at the Florence Biennale and the International Fine Art and Documentary Photography Biennale in Barcelona. In 2020 she received the Julia Margaret Cameron Award for Women Photographers in Fine Art. Sadaf’s work exhibits internationally and is part of the permanent collection at the Albuquerque Museum of Fine Art and has shown at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. She received her BFA at College of Santa Fe and her MA in Peace Studies at the United Nations University for Peace. Sadaf is currently the Executive Director of Kindle Project.