Connecting people through art 

In Hazara’s Eyes in the Sky (2020), the artist takes on the optics of surveillance and military reconnaissance as he examines one manifestation of children’s play in contemporary Afghanistan: the transformation of war remnants into yet another desert obstacle course. As he attempts to stand at a critical distance in his journey from the personal to the collective, Hazara continues to explore military conflict through the rituals and customs that define and connect Afghanistan’s many fragmented and intermingled ethnic communities. This movement from private to public is also manifest in his choice of filming technique, combining intimate closeups of ordinary details that are painfully familiar to those with a personal experience of the landscape and culture with long-range aerial shots that any viewer can recognise from the media. Eyes in the Sky tells the story of meaningless and useless wars, waged for generations, on foreign territory; the waste they leave behind; and the strength of these people’s hereditary faith in the steadfast power of spells against the evil eye.