Category: art

my work in master’s showcase

last friday we went to the opening of the master’s showcase, an invitational exhibit organized by the huntington arts council which showcased the work of award winning artists during the 2023 exhibition season. honored to be invited to share my work – three digital collages constructed with south asian fabrics depicting lucknow, bhubaneswar, and dhaka and connected to ‘return to sender: women of color in colonial postcards & the politics of representation,’ a nysca-funded project. so lucky that my parents could attend the opening with me.

The Warp & Weft Archive Palestine

Dear friends, the Warp & Weft audio archive came together as a way to connect people from across the world during a global pandemic which caused untold loss and grief. It is an ongoing project that allows diverse people (separated by arbitrary yet brutal political borders) to share their stories and feel a sense of collective power. 

Today we launch the next phase of this project. In the midst of the gruesome genocide we are witnessing in Gaza, people from around the world are welcome to join us in reading, holding up, and sharing the voices and stories of Palestinian writers, poets, and activists. This is an open archive, so contact us if you would like to contribute a reading and pls follow us @WarpAndWeftArchive 

We start with Fatima Mohammadi (Kansas City, Missouri) reading Fadwa Tuqan (1917-2003), a Palestinian poet and memoirist known for her representations of resistance to Israeli occupation in contemporary Arab poetry. Fatima began with: “I acknowledge that I occupy the land belonging to the great Lakota, Nakota and Dakota, Kaw and Kickapoo nations, in a country built by the labor of enslaved and disenfranchised people.”

Listen to EXISTENCE by Fadwa Tuqan on Instagram @warpandweftarchive

Warp & Weft by Shadab Zeest Hashmi,

Friends, as you know, The Warp & Weft archive of multilingual audio stories from across the world is an ongoing project.

Today I am honored to share a new poem by Shadab Zeest Hashmi, a Pakistani American poet and essayist whose work has been published worldwide. Recently, she spoke about Sufi archetypes at the London Arts-based Research Institute/AIJS online conference “Emergence of Soul: Jung and Islam.”

In her beautiful new poem, “Warp and Weft,” Shadab writes:

Limits are to be kissed. The warbler marks its territory with song/ And a country of sweet echoes is born, a mythos of whistle, rasp, chirp/ Ours is a song of the loom, with the warp and weft of old country/ and new.

Please listen here.

Later this week the Warp & Weft will begin its series on Palestinian writers and poets, so pls stay tuned.

‘life and times of michael k’ in brooklyn

thank u for all the lovely birthday wishes, friends, and thank u for the powerful prayers for palestinian liberation. my one birthday wish this year.

i spent some time with my daughter in nyc yesterday and saw a play based on a book by j. m. coetzee, ‘life and times of michael k,’ in brooklyn. his work is grim and heartbreaking but also full of humanity. my eyes welled up many times over the course of the play because it depicts the horrors of war — something we are witnessing daily on our phones and sceeens.

this afternoon i met my son in midtown before taking the LIRR back home to long island. didn’t do anything else today to respect the global strike for gaza. may the mayhem end. may people have a chance to mourn what they have lost and begin to rebuild their lives. ameen.

Artwork for fundraiser

I created this piece for Global Feminists for Palestine’s first solidarity event on Dec 1st at @aaww_nyc in which they read poetry and sold artwork with all the money going to Palestine Legal, a crucial organization doing crucial work at this brutal, agonizing time.

@globalfeministsforpalestine will be doing more such events. Pls connect with them and support Palestine Legal.

My artwork’s title is Palestine Sunbird 1. It is a digital collage constructed with South Asian textiles as an expression of solidarity and a recognition of parallel colonial histories.

#ceasefirenow

Interview on Long Island’s NPR radio station

Spoke with Gianna Volpe this morning about decolonizing knowledge and media representations of those who are stereotyped and marginalized – POCs, people from the Global South, women, and other oppressed communities.

This was for her show Friday Morning Tea on Long Island’s NPR radio station WLIW. Hope to share a recording soon. Pls listen here.

Our conversation was about the screening and discussion coming up at Southampton Arts Center of ‘Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation.’

After the film, I will be honored to be in conversation with Jeremy Dennis (Fine art photographer, Lead Artist & President of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio), Minerva Perez (Executive Director of Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island), and Brenda Simmons (Executive Director and Founder of Southampton African American Museum).

This is a free event! Pls register SouthamptonArtsCenter.org

Hope to see you soon!

Panelists for Southampton Screening

What the horrors of the world reiterate over and over again is that solidarity is safety, unity is strength, and that we the people can demonstrate more courage and compassion than those who rule over us.

Proud to collaborate with Jeremy Dennis (indigenous artist and photographer and Lead Artist & President of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio), Minerva Perez (Executive Director of Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island), and Brenda Simmons (Executive Director and Founder of Southampton African American Museum).

We will be discussing the power of representation and the mechanics of othering, among many other things. Pls join us for a screening and discussion.

‘Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation’ is coming to Southampton Arts Center on Sun Nov 19 at 2pm. This event is free but pls register at SouthamptonArtsCenter.org

Return to Sender at Southampton Arts Center

Please join us for a screening of my new film, Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation:

Southampton Arts Center (25 Jobs Lane, Southampton, NY 11968)

Sunday November 19th, 2:00-4:00 pm.

The film delves into colonial representations of people of color (especially women) and discusses Eurocentric beauty standards and imperial narratives, stereotypes and the process of othering, and the complexities of identity and belonging.

The screening will be followed by a community discussion led by Jeremy Dennis (Fine art photographer, Lead Artist & President of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio), Minerva Perez (Executive Director of Organizacion Latino-Americana of Eastern Long Island), and Brenda Simmons (Executive Director and Founder of Southampton African American Museum).

This event is free and open to the public, but registration is needed. Please register at SouthamptonArtsCenter.org.

Let’s decolonize now. Hope to see you then!

laurie anderson at mass moca

yesterday we spent the afternoon at mass moca (one of my favorite museums in the world). always so much to enjoy and absorb, but i will never forget TO THE MOON, a virtual reality experience by laurie anderson and hsin-chien huang.

“to the moon uses images and tropes from literature, science, science-fiction space movies, and politics to create an imaginary and dark new version of the moon. during the 15-min experience, the viewer is shot out from earth, walks on the surface of the moon, glides through space debris, flies through DNA skeletons, and is lifted up a lunar mountain.”

after i put on my headset, the walls around me began to fold and the floor started to disintegrate. it was a wtf kinda moment. soon i was in space with stars falling around me. i was able to fly to the moon by extending my arms which i could see in front of me, wearing a spacesuit. the seat i was in could pivot 360 degrees so i could look everywhere around me. my shadow (again clothed in a spacesuit) was below me, replicating all my movements as it would have in real life. on the moon i saw ancient sailing ships, dinosaurs, polar bears, and strands of numbers coming at me. at one point my arms turned into giant floppy plush snakes. later they became crystalline amalgamations of numbers. i decided to fly into a rock formation and liked how it shattered. debris hit my helmet, there was dust and the sound of breakage. towards the end of the 15 min, my body seemed to separate – the astronaut part of me peeled itself off and was now hurtling thru space. then laurie anderson’s voice in my ears:

“you know the reason I love the stars is because we can’t hurt them, we can’t burn them, we can’t melt them, we can’t make them overflow, we can’t flood them—so we keep reaching for them.”

if only that were also true of other human beings.

clark art institute

it’s rainy today so we spent the day at the clark art institute. first up their exhibition on human ecology and the work of carolina caycedo: “ancestral knowledge and environmentalism are at the core of caycedo’s work, which pays homage to community leaders and native elders, often female, who care for the natural world. she also depicts medicinal traditions of the mohican people native to the land the clark now occupies.”

then a visit to the clark’s permanent collection. was quite taken by the work of frederic remington and winslow homer.

my review: killers of the flower moon

last night we watched ‘killers of the flower moon’ by martin scorsese at images cinema, a wonderful independent film theater in williamstown, massachusetts. it’s an important film about a piece of history that has been deliberately erased. it shows how european settler colonialism comes sheathed in duplicity and death and how indigenous peoples are constantly harmed and betrayed by the very systems they are asked to accept and integrate into. i couldn’t help but think of palestine and the genocidal bombing and starvation of its native population. the violence, pathological lies, greed and treachery we see in the film become an apt metaphor for colonialism itself. a powerful film, a nasty bit of american history. lily gladstone, who plays an osage woman in the film, is stunning.