WAR TRASH Symposium to Examine Artist Aziz Hazara's Afghanistan Exhibition

War Trash, an off-site program for Aziz Hazara: Coming Home, is presented in collaboration with the Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School, New York, and the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, New York.

The symposium will take place Sat, Dec 12, 2026, 3-5:30pm at:

Starr Foundation Hall at The New School
University Center, UL102
63 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10003

For Aziz Hazara: Coming Home, artist Aziz Hazara returns items ranging from kneepads and uniforms to electronics, exercise equipment, recreational tools, kitchenware, tents, and fragments of infrastructure to America-all were discarded during the abrupt 2021 withdrawal from Bagram Airfield, a suburb-scaled enclave near Kabul that supported tens of thousands of residents until the last days of the two-decade U.S.-led NATO occupation of Afghanistan. Hazara's exhibition offers an archaeology of what is left behind after war ends and a straightforward gesture of return. The exhibition was recently reviewed by Emily Watlington for Art in America.

In a moment when the 2001 intervention in Afghanistan is being reassessed in light of new conflicts, this afternoon symposium expands upon Aziz Hazara: Coming Home's proposition to reckon with war waste. Beginning with an artist talk by Hazara (who joins remotely) and followed by conversations and presentations with Adam HajYahia, Tom Keenan, Saad Khan and Madiha Tahir, Jasbir K Puar, and Sophia Stamatopoulou-Robbins, the afternoon opens for consideration the immense human, environmental, and material effects of warfare.