Artist Statement
Niema Qureshi investigates the intersection of art, science, and technology within her teaching and artistic practice. She asks: How can technology extend or shift what’s possible in artmaking? And rather than being passive users of technology, how can we become active makers who engage it critically and creatively? Through hands-on experimentation with microcontrollers, soft circuits, and other hybrid materials, Niema explores ways to make the abstract or unseen—like data, sound, or energy—tangible and sensory.
Niema’s teaching and artistic practice are deeply intertwined; one consistently informs the other. She collaborates with educators and students in K–12 and university settings to design inquiry-based, arts-integrated curricula that support diverse ways of learning and knowing. Whether it’s the invisible forces surrounding us or the social systems that structure our lives, she engages with these ideas through collaborative artmaking that invites questioning, reflection, and care.
By bringing together art, technology, and education, Niema works to dissolve disciplinary boundaries and rethink who gets to participate in these spaces. Her work with CAPE and her students at SAIC reflects a commitment to making tools, materials, and knowledge more accessible—especially for young people from marginalized communities. In her own practice, she continues to ask how approaches grounded in craft, collaboration, and embodied learning might open up new possibilities in fields that have too often excluded those perspectives.
Project inspired by artist Sasha de Koninck
https://studiosdk.net/About-Sasha-de-Koninck
Abstract Machine, 2023
Co-produced by Betsy Zacsek and Niema Qureshi
Abstract Machine is a collaborative installation that explores the relationship between sound and mark-making. Part drawing device, part listening machine, it translates sonic input into visual output, blurring the line between code, gesture, and material. The work invites viewers to consider how invisible forces—vibrations, data, movement—can be made tangible through tactile processes and collaborative experimentation.
Video documentation by Noé Cuéllar.
