Saks Afridi (b. 1975, Peshawar) is a New York based multidisciplinary artist whose idiosyncratic practice fuses mysticism, vernacular craft and speculative futurism into a body of work he terms “Sci‑Fi Sufism.” Working across tapestry, miniature, sculpture, installation and collaborative public projects, Afridi invents visual worlds that translate inner spiritual quests and diasporic experience into tactile, narrative objects—prayer rugs that depict UFOs, miniature paintings that obey gravity, and the sprawling imagined architecture of SpaceMosque. Trained in advertising (Academy of Art) and sculpture (Art Students League, New York), Afridi brings a designer’s rigor and producer’s fluency to complex, labor‑intensive collaborations. He routinely partners with weavers, miniaturists, painters, fabricators and 3D modelers—often across continents—so that traditional craft processes are not merely reproduced but re‑energized. This ethic of shared authorship is central to his practice: Afridi positions himself as convener, translator and co‑author, ensuring artisans are remunerated and invested as equal collaborators. Conceptually, Afridi’s work pivots around two interlocking ideas. “Sci‑Fi Sufism” stages Sufi poetry, Islamic myth and South Asian folklore within speculative scenarios—prayer becomes portal, mosque becomes spacecraft—while “Insider Outsider” interrogates belonging and displacement. Afridi’s personal biography—growing up between countries, languages and cultures—feeds these frameworks. He treats hybridity not as deficit but as fertile condition: the outsider who insists on belonging by projecting an energy of presence. His visual language reframes religious ritual, architecture and ornament as allegories for migration, identity and transcendence. Technically inventive and materially diverse, Afridi’s signature projects range from hand‑woven “UFO rugs” that collapse Persian tradition into futurist iconography to collaborative miniature paintings made in Lahore that reimagine gravity and form. His SpaceMosque project—an evolving, multidisciplinary mythos realized through models, installations and video—exemplifies his ambition to build new cosmologies that are both intimate and architectural. Afridi’s sculptures often incorporate analog technologies and vintage mechanics; a decommissioned car part can become a poetic metaphor, its industrial history reframed as a ritual object. Afridi’s work has been exhibited internationally in museum and gallery contexts—SpaceMosque and related installations have appeared at Aicon Gallery (New York), Weltmuseum (Vienna), Brattleboro Museum (Vermont) and in thematic exhibitions from Art Basel to the Tate’s BP Art Exchange. He has also brought social practice to bear on urgent political themes: the land‑art intervention Not a Bug Splat, co‑created with JR and others, addressed drone warfare in Pakistan and achieved substantial public impact. Afridi’s projects have received broad media attention across The New York Times, BBC, Al Jazeera, CNN and late‑night television, and he has been recognized with advertising honors (two Gold Cannes Lions, multiple D&AD and One Show pencils) plus a United Nations Award for Peace & Understanding. Afridi speaks English, Urdu, Pashto and conversational Arabic; his practice navigates both global platforms and local labs—whether a weaver’s village in Pakistan or a New York studio. By marrying craft, narrative and interventionist tactics, Saks Afridi imagines forms of belonging that are performative, speculative and joyful: work that insists the sacred can be playful, that tradition can be futuristic, and that art’s highest task is to re‑map how we see ourselves in an interconnected world.