Author: mara.ahmed

The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] opening on April 1st, 2022

Erica Bryant: Deep in the pandemic, Rajesh and I got an email from the great artist Mara Ahmed asking us each to write a story about what we were experiencing and to send her a recording of it. She wanted to capture the year in an oral storytelling project, an alternative communal tapestry, woven with words in diverse languages, from diverse people across the globe.

That was September 2020. In 2021, Mara published The Warp and Weft stories in an online archive that could be accessed while we were all separated because of the virus. Today, thank God, we can gather again. And The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] will open in person at Rochester Contemporary Art Center tonight, April 1, from 6-9 p.m. Mara will speak about her work at 6:30.

The pandemic stories that Mara collected from people from Pakistan to Belgium to Brighton, NY, will be heard in the gallery, set against a beautiful projection of the speakers’ portraits, like those you see below, that was made by Rajesh.

My story is about George Floyd and my great grandfather.

Rajesh’s is about isolation, introspection and extrospection.

You can hear our stories and the others at ROCO, 137 East Ave. Or online.
The exhibition at RoCo will be open through May 7.

Languages other than English

Languages other than English are rich and beautiful! Expand your mind and world.

Repost from Rochester Contemporary Art Center:

When you visit The Warp & Weft [ Face to Face ] you will see and hear stories in Arabic, Bosnian, French, Hindi, Kashmiri, Spanish and Urdu. The Warp & Weft archive preferences each storyteller’s native language. While English translations will be available online and at arm’s length at the gallery, we’re excited to offer visitors an experience with languages they may not understand but whose sounds and script might invite them to learn more.

Excerpt from story by Surbhi Dewan featured in The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] opening April 1. #SoundOn

Artist Talk on April 1 at 630pm

I will be speaking at the opening on April 1st at 630pm! Exhibition opens at 6pm at Rochester Contemporary Art Center, 137 East Ave, Rochester.
.
Repost from @roco137:

Meet @mara__ahmed, the curator of The Warp & Weft archive!

Mara is an interdisciplinary artist, activist filmmaker, and founder of production company #NeelumFilms. She was born in Lahore, Pakistan and educated in Belgium, Pakistan, and the United States. Her work has been exhibited at galleries in New York and California, and her documentaries have been broadcast on @pbs and screened at international film festivals.

Mara is interested in dialogue across both physical and psychological boundaries. In 2017, she gave a Gara talk about the meaning of borders and nationalism entitled “The edges that blur.” Her first film, The Muslims I Know, premiered at the @eastmanmuseum, in 2008 and started a dialogue between American Muslims and people of other faiths. After this, Mara released her second film, Pakistan One on One (2011), and a third, A Thin Wall (2015), which premiered at the @bradfordlitfest, won a Special Jury Prize atthe Amsterdam Film Festival, and was acquired by @mubiindia.

Mara is currently working on The Injured Body, a film about racism in America, focusing exclusively on the voices of women of color.

The Warp & Weft [ Face to Face ], the physical rendition of Mara’s online audio archive, opens at RoCo on First Friday April 1 and continues through May 7. Read more on our website.

#TheWarpAndWeft #TheWarpAndWeftFaceToFace

my review: winter sleep

i watched a wonderful film last night: ‘winter sleep’ by nuri bilge ceylan, one of my favorite directors. it’s 3 hours long but one doesn’t get bored for a second. there are so many unforgettable scenes with uncontrived yet constantly engaging talk, their intimacy and small, fleshed-out details contrasted with the vastness and breathtaking beauty of snow-covered cappadocia, a region where houses are carved into rock.

the cinematography is gorgeous, as always (watch ‘once upon a time in anatolia’), the acting seamless. as justin chang said in his excellent review: ‘the supreme visual achievement of “winter sleep” may well be the beauty it finds in the crags and contours of its actors’ marvelously expressive faces.’

ceylan is a genius. the subtlety with which he paints places and people, the way he lights a room, the easy exchange between characters where the difference in their social status or the years of conflict and bitterness between them begin to surface ever so gently.

he co-wrote the script with his wife ebru ceylan. it’s a character study inspired by chekhov’s short story, “the wife’” and one of the subplots in dostoyevsky’s “the brothers karamazov”. justin chang: ‘what’s remarkable is the manner in which the script steers away from run-of-the-mill plot mechanics in favor of a more revealing and no less absorbing immersion in the conversations — long, glorious, generously overflowing, superbly sculpted and acted conversations’.

and then there’s schubert’s piano sonata no. 20, the only music played in the film, just a few times. perfection. it fills one with muted sadness and seemed to connect back to something. so i researched. one of the reviews mentioned it was a nod to bresson’s ‘au hasard balthazar,’ one of the saddest and most beautiful films i’ve ever seen.

a masterclass in filmmaking.

Meet the storytellers behind The Warp & Weft

On April 21st at 6pm EST, join Rochester Contemporary Art Center for a virtual conversation with The Warp & Weft writers, artists and activists. They will share their reflections about 2020 and the inspiration/process behind their stories. Together they will help highlight the importance of archiving diverse voices and the crucial role storytelling can play in times of uncertainty and upheaval.

Our speakers will connect with us from Gaza (Palestine), the Gambia, Ireland, Oakland (California), Rochester (New York) and Long Island. Registration is necessary. Pls register at the RoCo website.

Speakers (in alphabetical order):

Ashwaq Abualoof
Darien Lamen
Deema K. Shehabi
Erica Bryant
Ian Layton
Kaddijatou Fatty
Karen Faris
Quajay Donnell
Rose Pasquarello Beauchamp
Selena Fleming
Zoë Lawlor

The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at RoCo

In 2020 and later in early 2021, I was honored to work with an international group of truth-tellers, writers, poets, artists and activists who shared their personal stories and reflections. We built a multilingual archive together called the Warp & Weft, because it wove the threads of our thoughts and emotions together. Now a year later, the Warp & Weft [Face to Face] is coming to Rochester Contemporary Art Center as a multimedia exhibition. It opens on April 1st with an artist’s talk at 6:30pm. You will be able to meet some of the brilliant storytellers at a Zoom event on April 21st starting at 6pm. And you will have a chance to see the exhibition at RoCo until May 7th. This is beyond exciting – I hope that you can join us!

‘Visit The Warp & Weft [Face to Face] at RoCo and immerse yourself in a colorful tapestry of stories. You can social distance, yet walk through the material expression of the archive and experience the beauty of human ideas and kinship.’

Thank you Bleu Cease, Rajesh Barnabas, and the RoCo team for all the hard work in bringing this project to life.

#thewarpandweft #thewarpweft #thewarpweftfacetoface #thewwf2f #multilingualarchive #archive #storytelling #oralhistories #yearofthepandemic #roco137 #multimedia #multimediaexhibition #maraahmedstudio #maraahmed

From Lost or Found

‘I have been lucky so far. I have not lost anyone in my immediate family, although I have lost most of my aunts and uncles – my parents’ siblings. Living in the U.S., away from extended family, it is difficult to mourn loved ones back in Pakistan and make such losses real. It’s like being in a state of suspension – unmoored and unsubstantial. Like you, I have lost cities, continents, friends, homes, communities, and languages. Always there is this ache in one’s heart. A sorrowful mourning.
Recently, I lost Rochester, New York, a city I knew and loved for 18 years. A city where my kids grew up and where I became an activist filmmaker.’

From Lost or Found, my collab with art historian Claudia Pretelin, published in Mason Street Literary Magazine.

#masonstreet #literarymagazine #lostorfound #conversation #exchange #art #memory #places #languages #becoming #home #migration #mexico #pakistan #belgium #unitedstates #photographs #photography #images #collage #literature #culture #instrumentsofmemory #claudiapretelin #maraahmed

wedding in west hartford

beautiful wedding in west hartford, connecticut! congratulations fizza and rizwan – u make a lovely couple mashallah. so wonderful to spend time with family. am wearing my mother’s vintage sari, chiffon from paris, 1970s

#wedding #familywedding #familygettogether #pakistaniwedding #shadimubarak #westhartford #connecticut #mubarikho #vintagesari #frenchchiffon #1970s

Lost or Found

So proud of this beautiful conversation and exchange of memories, places, languages and photographs between myself and my dearest friend Claudia Pretelin (an accomplished art historian). Thank you to Kathleen Kern for her editing support and to Celeste Schantz for publishing this gorgeous issue. Always an honor to work with brilliant women <3

From Lost or Found, in Mason Street Literary Magazine:

‘The following is a portion of the correspondence between Mara Ahmed and Claudia Pretelin. Ahmed is an interdisciplinary artist and activist filmmaker based on Long Island, New York. Claudia is an art historian, independent researcher, and arts administrator based in Los Angeles, California. The two women collaborated on several projects, starting with Current Seen, Rochester’s biennial for contemporary art. In 2020, Claudia interviewed Ahmed for Instruments of Memory, a site she curates and which documents conversations with women in the arts. As a response, Ahmed decided to interview Pretelin about her work, but in the form of a dialogue about art, memory, language, and becoming. They hope to continue this conversation over the years and capture the continuing shifts in their lives and work. Their correspondence is a collage of text, images, and references both literary and cultural. It is intimate and global, straddling distances between Mexico, Pakistan, Belgium and the US.‘

War Hurts Everyone Rally

Michael Boucher:

Grateful for all of the organizers and speakers who helped to put together the “War Hurts Everyone” rally tonight in front of the Federal Building. So many powerful stories of the intersections of the situation in Ukraine with so many other situations of injustice, displacement, occupation, oppression, human rights violations and war – all sharing threads of the abuse of power, racial capitalism and forms of imperialism.

Places like Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Palestine, Somalia, the strees of the United States (and so many other places) all require our activism and outcry. In so many places, it is our government, our multinationals, our weapons manufacturers, our fossil fuel industry and our military suppliers who have vested interests in these conflicts and displacements.

I know that Mara and Pamela were named organizers of today (thank you!) and I know that many, many others helped to put it together and took risks in speaking their truths so that we might witness the intersections and rise up collectively. War hurts everyone, yes, but it does not hurt everyone in the same way or to the same extent.

War Hurts Everyone

This is happening today with a list of brilliant speakers headed by Olena Prokopovych. At 5:00 PM, Federal Building in Rochester. Pls join us!

From our Press Release:

This rally will bring together frontline organizers, activists, and community members to highlight Rochester’s solidarity with Ukraine. Horrified by the atrocities perpetuated against the people of Ukraine and the discrimination and violence inflicted on African, Asian, and Caribbean students and citizens attempting to flee the war, activists will recognize that the struggle against war, militarism, and racism, transcends national boundaries be it in Ukraine, the United States, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, or Palestine.

Their inspiration will be drawn from movements advocating for a more just and equitable world, including the thousands of anti-war activists in Russia and Ukraine calling for an end to state-sponsored violence, the movements advocating for Black Liberation here in the US and around the world, and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement against Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestine.

As the voices of those who have been directly affected by war, militarism, and racism must continue to be centered, a diverse group of speakers will share their experiences about how both war and resistance to invasion and occupation are presented through a racist lens. Western media and politicians have described Ukrainian refugees as intelligent, car-owning Europeans, distinguishing them from “migrants” from the Global South who are seen as a threat to European safety. This contrast in terminology plays out in real life when people of color are allowed to drown rather than reach fortress Europe.

Activists will locate the war on Ukraine within the broader context of imperial interventions, military adventurism, and the lucrative business of war. They will seek to draw attention to the defense industry raking in obscene profits by manufacturing weapons. In short, this rally aims to deepen the scope of discussions about what’s happening in Ukraine. Rather than a disconnected narrative that fails to make connections between global power structures and their violence on some of the most vulnerable people in the world, this rally will endeavor to model a cohesive and inclusive position that’s both explicitly anti-war and anti-racism.

For questions, pls contact Pamela Kim, Elora Kang, or myself.

What Rashida Tlaib Represents

a profile of @rashidatlaib by the brilliant rozina ali in the @nytimes. we are on the cusp of change.

‘During the 1990s the Israeli government and the Palestine Liberation Organization, along with the United States, agreed that the best solution to the conflict was the establishment of two states: a sovereign Palestine and a sovereign Israel coexisting side by side. Though the borders have never been agreed upon, the two-state outcome remains a “core U.S. policy objective,” according to the State Department. But since then, settlements have grown steadily, while military occupation of the Palestinian territories continues. Today, nearly 700,000 Jewish settlers occupy land in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, which has not only cut off some residents’ access to water and electricity but also left Palestinians with less — and more fragmented — territory for a Palestinian state in any hypothetical future negotiation. This has led Middle East experts like Zaha Hassan from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Steven Cook from the Council on Foreign Relations and commentators like Peter Beinart to publicly give up on a two-state solution as a fair or realistic outcome and turn toward what was once considered a radical prospect in the debate: a single democratic state with equal rights for Arabs and Jews.

Tlaib didn’t seem to have a firm view on the best road to peace before her election. During her 2018 campaign, the liberal pro-Israel group J Street endorsed her candidacy based on a meeting and a policy paper that her team submitted, which argued that a two-state outcome, while increasingly difficult to achieve, was the best aim. Soon after, in an interview with the left-wing magazine In These Times, she reversed herself, questioning the two-state solution. After seeking clarification from Tlaib about her position, J Street pulled its endorsement. By the time Tlaib reached Washington, she was the only member of Congress to publicly back a single, fully democratic state.’

#rashidatlaib #rashidatlaibisabadass #rashidatlaibisright #supportrashidatlaib #palestine #palestinewillbefree #rozinaali #ethicaljournalism #noaidforisrael #bds #bdsmovement

in rochester for art exhibition opening

what a fabulous day! art and life talk with two brilliant artist friends with whom i had coffee and then iranian food, long convos about arabic and urdu poetry and iraqi mannasama (“manna from heaven”) with a family i love, some spicy vegetable soup and a tour of her new home with another dear friend, and finally late night catching up over hot chocolate with two beautiful women i love and admire. heaven <3

i was in rochester from march 30-april 2nd. more pictures and details on instagram @mara__ahmed