Mumtaz Hammad works across urban planning, sound design, and writing to explore spatial justice, cultural preservation, and community-centered mapping. They hold an M.S. in Urban Planning from Columbia University's GSAPP and an M.A. in South Asian Studies from UT Austin.
Their trans-disciplinary practice investigates how community spaces are located, interpellated, and experienced through processes of planning, performance, and sonic composition.
Their writings have been published in EFNIKS, Spy Kids Review, URBAN Magazine, Cordite Magazine, and Rest for Resistance.
CV may be provided upon request.
Home
Email
Are.na
ALL PROJECTS
Virtual atlas updating the City of Austin's 2018 Cultural Asset Mapping Project, using advanced GIS to analyze 200+ cultural spaces and inform preservation planning strategies. Interactive platform addresses spatial inequities in cultural access and displacement pressures facing marginalized communities.
Tools: ArcGIS Pro, QGIS, Web Mapping, Adobe Creative Suite, Cargo, HTML/CSS
2024
UI prototype translating spatial analysis of NYC cultural spaces into community-centered digital tool. Based on 50+ community interviews across NYC neighborhoods, this project addresses information barriers and accessibility gaps in cultural participation. Demonstrates how planners can translate GIS data into user-facing tools that improve equitable access to community resources.
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Community Research
2024
Spatial analysis of surveillance infrastructure and policing patterns in Brooklyn nightlife districts. Using hotspot analysis, kernel density mapping, and temporal pattern analysis to support community-mediated safety alternatives and equitable nightlife policy.
Tools: ArcGIS Desktop, HTML/CSS, Microsoft Excel, Adobe InDesign, Network Analyst
2023
Temporary audiovisual installation near Yanaguana Springs honoring Coahuiltecan indigenous connections to water through spatial design and acoustic ecology. Demonstrates how planning tools can center indigenous perspectives in cultural resource management and public lands design.
Tools: SketchUp, Adobe Creative Suite, Ableton Live, Site Analysis, Acoustic Design
2024
A commissioned hybrid/live collaboration with Embaci celebrating the release of 8ulentina's album SURPASSING DISASTER. In this experimental performance, we engaged with music as an ancestral technology that bridges temporalities of past and future, ultimately dissolving temporal boundaries into negation.
Video synthesis, live performance.
2025
Audiovisual composition exploring oceanic and spiritual architecture through sound design and spatial theory. Drawing on Karen Barad's concept of intra-action, Édouard Glissant's oceanic philosophy, and Daoist concepts of emptiness, this piece examines "nothingness" as architectural material— through visualizing how the ocean's spatial negativity holds vastness and intra-actions that inform both built and unbuilt environments.
Sound design, poesis, theoretical research.
2024
Transnational audiovisual collaboration with French artist Sprælle, live-streamed internationally on Ola Radio (Marseille). Performance interrogated genre and border divisions through transcontinental sonic referencing.
DJ Performance, visual composition, international collaboration.
2024
Curated audiovisual installation featuring international artists Tati Au Miel and Embaci. Produced alongside B.P.M. Collective in abandoned water drainage area in Austin, TX, demonstrating community-led cultural production and spatial reclamation. Flier artwork by Eric Hernandez.
Curation, production, site-specific installation, performance.
2022
Group exhibition organized by queer and trans artists of color at the Fronte Art Cultura (San Diego), exploring postcolonial futurities and gender abolition. Featured visual installation of three poems (under artist name ISRAFIL) and looping soundscape composition.
The poems engage with racial capitalism, intergenerational trans epistemologies, and fixed identity narratives—suggesting that subjectivities can transform into modes of relation through repetition and intention. Work examines how none of our actions exist in isolation, as all beings are delicately threaded in capacities of kinship.
Installation art, sound composition.
2021
All-trans multimedia exhibition at SUPERFUN (Gainesville, FL). Assisted with gallery installation and conducted a live poetry reading, supporting community-centered trans cultural production. Flier artwork by program organizers.
Gallery coordination, gallery installation, live poetry.
2017
Online public lecture exploring material and cyborg feminism, part of BY US FOR US's open-source educational initiative. Contributed to accessible community education outside institutional frameworks.
Public programming, theoretical communication.
2019
Group exhibition centering queer dialogue at 4MOST Art Gallery (Gainesville). Contributed original visual works and soundscape composition, creating multisensory environment for community connection.
Visual art, poetry performance, sound composition.
2018
Independent publication centering queer utopian thinking and speculative worldbuilding. Contributed poetry engaging with queer futurity and liberation.
Poetry, publication.
2018