Banned Media in the Basement: Khajistan at SculptureCenter, NYC
by Khajistan Cultural Desk
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Exhibit: Jun 19–Jul 28, 2025 at SculptureCenter, New York City
Opening Reception: Jun 18, 6–8pm
Khajistan Bazaar: Sundays, Jun 22–Jul 27, 12–6pm
Image: Screenshot from a 1993 gonzo-style adult film shot in Peshawar, showing two unidentified performers kissing.
This summer, Khajistan brings its underground archive above ground, taking over the lower level of SculptureCenter in New York City with Spasial Program—a live exhibition of banned, censored, discontinued, and overlooked media from across our vaults.
Running from June 19 to July 28, 2025, Spasial Program showcases the visual debris of suppressed histories: war propaganda leaflets, Islamicate Judaica, blacklisted Urdu and Farsi magazines, untranslatable street ephemera, and rare audiovisual detritus from the forgotten or forbidden circuits of Pakistani, Iranian, and Arabic pop culture. Each piece in the exhibition bears a trace of refusal—by censors, by gatekeepers, by platforms that have no room for complexity.
→ Khajistan Bazaar every Sunday 12-6
Every Sunday from June 22 to July 27, the basement transforms into a bazaar—open to the public, collectors, and curious wanderers. Visitors can browse Khajistan merchandise, purchase archive duplicates, attend film screenings, and explore a rotating selection of rare materials from our Toshakhana, the Khajistan Special Collections.
Spasial Program is a deliberate misspelling of both “special” and “spatial.” It first surfaced as a hashtag on our now-banned Instagram accounts—attached to posts too unruly to algorithmically survive. These weren’t just aesthetics; they were evidence: mujra dancers mid-thrust in Punjabi stage shows, mannequins hung in garment shops, men embracing on empty streets, bodybuilders posing in alleys, and hairy man butts.
All of it comes from our digital archive—a living collection of media censored for being too vulgar, too sexual, too domestic, too sincere, or too strange for the public record. From accidental erotics to blunt exhibitionism, from macho posturing to softness mistaken for deviance, these are images that expose the contradictions of visibility in the Islamic world. In Khawaja Sira slang, spasial means “special event.”
Khajistan is more than an archive—it is a digital and physical fortress built by and for communities whose visual worlds were never meant to be saved. We don’t preserve memory—we activate it. What we show was never meant to be archived, let alone seen.
Come through.
→ Visit Toshakhana Special Collections
→ Read the Khajistan Manifesto 2025
