Mirza N. Shams

Mirza Shams is Chicago Therapy Collective’s Trans Art Is Advisor. They are passionate about creating authentic and loving spaces for the Trans community, and believe diy spaces are a conduit for community connection and healing. Mirza is a queer/gender-fluid Egyptian artist, musician (under their stage name NAXÖ), therapist, queerness/gender advocate, and LGBTQ+ asylum seekers/refugees activist. They have a Bachelor in General Medicine and Surgery from Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Egypt. Mirza incorporates social, mental and emotional justice through mindfulness, queerness and cultural intersectionalities into their music and mental-health work. They focus their activities on helping their queer-migration communities around Chicagoland towards healing paths and true-self journeys.

Mirza has been with the Chicago Therapy Collective’s since their first Trans Art Is exhibit at the Andersonville Galleria. You can see their artist profile and details about their 6 Drawing submission from that exhibit here. They have participated in subsequent exhibits through playing their music for exhibit shows. As an artist of many mediums, Mirza’s artwork radiates a blend of surrealism, symbolism and psychedelic waves of queerness, gender fluidity, queer-migration, mental-emotional health, eroticism and post-colonialism. They’re an interactive and loving performance artist, whose music adds a spirit of openness, warmth.