It was an intensive several months to make new work and collaborate with artist Autumn Spears to create the Braids & Threads project and installation, which inaugurated the new space in Dupont Circle for Washington Project for the Arts. We spent a total of seven months immersed in the project, four months conceptualizing and creating the work and three months in residence in the gallery with an exhibition that had evolving elements. We created Bangladeshi woodblocks out of Autumn’s braid designs and then printed them on two Bangladeshi saris. Much of the work was made or finished in the gallery. We made a huge tapestry with braiding, woodblock, crochet, embroidery and painting, with some work done on site and other work in our studios. We both finished wearable art pieces while working in the gallery: Autumn made a huge crocheted jacket with hand-drawn images and words linked to her heritage; while I completed 12 woodblocked and hand-embroidered vests made from three used saris from an earlier project.

As you approached the WPA Project Space you would see multicolored vinyl text on the windows, some to be read from outside and some from inside. Once in the gallery, there were chairs available to pull up and relax and take everything in. There was also text on the gallery’s dropped ceiling. All of the text came from our conversations, which we turned into a podcast. I designed, cut, and weeded the vinyl text myself on a vinyl cutter we purchased with funding from WPA. Towards the back of the gallery, visitors were also invited to enter our “Intergenerational Listening and Memory Space” where they could play vinyl records from our family collections spanning several decades and to add their own intergenerational stories or reflections on heritage to our specially-crafted journals or using window markers on the windows themselves. Autumn and I also hosted Tea Time every Friday from 3-5 pm, serving turmeric ginger tea along with treats, while engaging in conversation with the gallery visitors and creating work.

It was a wonderful experience working with Autumn with the support of the WPA team. WPA provided us with materials, a budget, and artist fees to realize this ambitious project. Huge thanks to the whole team at WPA. I am sharing the wall text and a few images here. Click the images to see the full frame. Photos by Vivian Doring (top) and Monica Jahan Bose (bottom).

— Monica Jahan Bose

Wall text:

Braids & Threads: Connecting Legacies is organized by artists Monica Jahan Bose and Autumn Spears.

Both Bose and Spears lean into their diasporic heritage in their practices, incorporating skills they learned from their elders: sewing/textiles (Bose) crocheting and hair braiding techniques (Spears). Their ongoing conversations—across generations, between Gen X and Gen Z—have opened up new energy and direction in both of their practices. This is their first collaboration.

For this project, Bose and Spears engage in a series of conversations—some recorded as podcasts—about the relevance of exploring connection with heritage, mothers, and ancestors. Together, they consider how weaving inherited knowledge into contemporary work can promote resilience.

Using the concepts, stories, and ideas arising from these conversations, the two artist-organizers created new work and a site-specific installation in WPA’s project space using multilingual text, embroidery, braiding, sewing, crochet, fiber art, and printmaking. It will be an evolving exhibition and work-space, where other artists and community members are invited to drop in and contribute with their own stories and art-making.

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