A Night with Buddha

The festival A Night with Buddha is an artistic platform that commemorates the Bamiyan Buddha statues that were destroyed by the Taliban/ISIS in 2001, and that works against polarization and oppression through conversations between cultural practitioners.

The festival has been held in Bamiyan since 2013 and in Harstad since 2017. When activist Maryam Sharifi moved to Harstad in 2016, she took the initiative to establish the festival locally.

In connection with the Michael Rakowitz exhibition, and his work What Dust Will Rise?, which directly addresses the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, we have invited the A Night with Buddha festival to Stavanger Art Museum.

Programme (updated continuously)

18:00: Introduction by Andreas Wathne Røst, Education officer (PhD)
18:05: Screening of the film from the work What Dust Will Rise?
18:25: Lecture by Maryam Sharifi (title forthcoming)
19:15: Poetry reading by Tahmasbi Khorasani
19:25: Performance by Monirah Hashemi (title forthcoming)
19:45: Conversation and audience Q&A with Maryam, Tahmasbi, Monirah, and Andreas

 

BIO

Maryam Sharifi is an Afghan cultural activist and festival organizer. She grew up in war-torn Afghanistan under the Taliban’s first regime of terror in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 2001, the Taliban destroyed two Buddha statues carved into a mountainside in Bamiyan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Twelve years later, in 2013, Sharifi founded the festival A Night with Buddha to commemorate the statues, foster dialogue, and raise awareness of the importance of culture, art, and identity.

Monirah Hashemi is an Afghan-Swedish theatre maker and performer based in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on lived experience, Monirah combines storytelling, theatre, song, and dance, weaving myth together with reality. Her artistic practice invites audiences on a shared, collective journey that explores the emotional complexities of unacknowledged trauma and grief. She is also a co-founder of the A Night with Buddha festival.

Tahmasbi Khorasani is a prominent poet, author, and researcher from Balkh, a city located in the historical region of Khorasan and present-day Afghanistan. He has received more than ten awards from national and international literary festivals. Several of Khorasani’s books are considered blasphemous by the Taliban and other conservative religious groups. In early August 2025, Khorasani arrived in Stavanger for a two-year ICORN residency. He is Stavanger’s 15th City of Refuge writer through ICORN.