Events
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris
Exhibition Dates: September 10-November 4, 2023
Opening Reception with Poetry Slam: September 10 from 4-6 pm
Artist Talk: October 21 from 2-3 pm
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays 2-6pm + Saturdays 12 noon – 4pm
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris is an installation of video, drawings, poems, saris, and kanthas inspired by plants and herbs. Touching the soil and growing food are grounding and nourishing. For the last two years, Bangladeshi-American artist Monica Jahan Bose and DC participants in her Storytelling with Saris project have been connecting with the soil and Earth and food justice issues by nurturing plants on windowsills and planting neighborhood vegetable gardens. This year they planted and harvested in the garden at The Nicholson Project. Bose led a series of planting workshops that included poetry and art inspired by soil and plants. Using performance, sari art, writing, and film, Storytelling with Saris, which commenced in 2012, links DC residents with Bangladeshi coastal women farmers in solidarity to address climate and food injustice.
The opening reception is from 4-6 pm on September 10 and will include a poetry slam at 5 pm. Poets include Sonja Berry, Sherri Gales, Lala Forbes, Rashika Johnson, Philip Mecham, Marjorie Thomas, Lia Totty, Demetria Willis, and others. ASL will be provided. There will be a concurrent opening of an exhibition by Stephanie J. Williams.
Monica Jahan Bose bio: Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, film, performance, and public art. Her socially engaged work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops, art actions, and temporary installations and performances. Bose uses the sari — a precolonial 18-foot-long unstitched garment that is always recycled and never discarded — to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. She has exhibited her work extensively in the US and internationally (20 solo shows, numerous group exhibitions, and more than 25 performances) including solo exhibitions at the Bangladesh National Museum and MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. Her ongoing collaborative project STORYTELLING WITH SARIS with women farmers from her ancestral island village has travelled to 10 states and seven countries and engaged thousands of people. Her work has appeared in the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, Art Asia Pacific, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Honolulu Star Advertiser, the Japan Times, and all major newspapers in Bangladesh. She has a BA in the Practice of Art (Painting) from Wesleyan University, a post-graduate Diploma in Art from Santiniketan, India, and a JD from Columbia Law School.
This project was supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
Monica Jahan Bose will be participating in the the third annual Women’s Environmental Leadership (WEL) summit taking place from Thursday September 14 through Sunday September 17, 2023, in Washington D.C. The summit is a signature program of The Center for Environmental Justice at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum (CEJ). Launched this past Earth Day, the Center builds on the work of the Urban Waterways Project, which for twelve years explored and documented the relationship between urban waterways and their surrounding communities. WEL was launched in 2018 to build capacity for future women environmental leadership. Through summits, community forums, lectures, and oral histories, a national network of environmental leaders and young women have explored the importance of mentorship, various educational and career opportunities, and the multitude of ways in which leadership is enacted. The launch of the Center and the WEL summit are part of our museum’s focus on Our Environment,
Our Future, a year-long celebration of programming which includes the exhibition To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington D.C., and the first cohort of our Environmental Justice Academy. Over the course of the summit, we will welcome attendees for an opening Dinner & Discussion, two days of panels and workshops, and a day of field trips, all designed to empower the next generation with the knowledge, skillsets, and inspiration they need to take the next steps in their personal and professional pathways.
Monica will be a panelist on September 16, for the session, The Arts, Environmental Advocacy, and Activism. Discussion will explore the role of the Arts in environmental advocacy and activism through an exploration of how the environmental experiences of artists inform media and messaging, the various spaces such work can inhabit, and how such engagement serves to make environmental practice more accessible.
Image: This digital artwork by Amir Khadar has been commissioned as a mural by the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum for the exhibit To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C.
Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) welcomes you to attend and participate in September’s Town Hall on Fashion and Textiles in celebration of Textile Month and Fashion Week in NYC. We’ll be hosted by Mercury Store in Brooklyn, NY.
The history of textile arts is as old as human civilization; our textiles tell stories and serve many purposes, including as the underpinning of fashion. What we wear, how we wear it, and how it’s designed or made holds cultural significance and is one of the most visible forms of expression. As a trillion-dollar global industry, fashion reaches all of us and impacts our climate, well-being, and relationship to our bodies.
We invite you to learn about the diverse and exciting creative projects and opportunities coming out of the Asian American textile arts and fashion community at Town Hall’s rapid-fire line-up of pitches, and meet our featured presenters: artist Monica Jahan Bose and Rebecca Hui, CEO and Founder of Roots Studio!
After the presentations, we’ll host a potluck, so please bring something to share; homemade or store-bought goods are welcome. Tell us what you’re bringing when you RSVP. A4 will provide drinks.
This event is FREE and open to the public. RSVP is required to pitch and/or attend, but you do not have to pitch to attend.
Accessibility: The building is completely ADA accessible. If you need ASL interpretation, large print, or any other accommodations for this event, please email jlee@aaartsalliance.org at least one week before this event.
To keep everyone safe and healthy, if you are not feeling well or have been exposed to COVID-19, please stay home. We will provide masks.
Interested in pitching? Please carefully read about the pitch process below.
About the Pitch Process
A4 Town Halls are a forum to share an upcoming project or exhibition, promote an event or opportunity, find collaborators and venues, or simply introduce yourself to the community. There are two ways to pitch at an A4 Town Hall: a two-minute pitch which requires pre-registering, and a thirty-second pitch which you can sign up for at the event.
Two-minute pitches
Sign up ahead of time for a two-minute pitch by completing the following steps:
- Register for a “Pitch” ticket via Eventbrite (either with or without a donation), and
- Complete this pitch form with details about your pitch at least three days before the event.
If you do not complete the form by the deadline, you risk not being included in the line-up.
In your pitch form, please include any images, video, or slides you would like presented during your pitch. We encourage you to share your website and social handles so that we can promote on the event page and in the slides – which we share with all attendees after the event. Slides will be presented in the order in which they are uploaded. If you would like to ensure your slides appear in the correct order, please number them. A4 Staff will be compiling and driving the master slideshow. Presenters will not be able to use their devices to present.
We cap the two-minute pitches to 14 total presenters on a first come, first served basis which we will manage through Eventbrite. If we reach capacity, and you would like to be put on the waitlist, please email jlee@aaartsalliance.org.
Thirty-second pitches
After the featured presentations and two-minute pitches, we invite anyone from the audience to provide a thirty-second pitch. This requires signing up at the event via an online form we provide.
About A4’s Town Hall
Town Hall is A4’s bi-monthly community gathering event that features presentations, pitches, and power networking! We welcome artists of all disciplines, as well as arts organizations, to pitch upcoming projects, find collaborators, or discover new opportunities in a lively space.
About Monica Jahan Bose
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, film, performance, and public art. Her socially engaged work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops, art actions, and temporary installations and performances. Bose uses the sari — a precolonial 18-foot-long unstitched garment that is always recycled and never discarded — to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. She has exhibited her work extensively in the US and internationally (20 solo shows, numerous group exhibitions, and more than 25 performances) including solo exhibitions at the Bangladesh National Museum and MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. Her ongoing collaborative project STORYTELLING WITH SARIS with women farmers from her ancestral island village has travelled to 10 states and seven countries and engaged thousands of people.
About Rebecca Hui
Rebecca Hui is an entrepreneur and artist passionate about bridging cultures globally through beauty and wonder. She is the CEO of Roots Studio, a collective of future-forward creatives, technologists, and indigenous creatives reimagining cultural sustainability onto new formats through equitable bridging. Roots Studio represents 31 indigenous communities globally, bridging indigenous arts and knowledge to partnerships with groups like Patagonia, Chanel, Cartier, amongst others. Roots Studio has been featured in The Business of Fashion as “The Antidote to Cultural Appropriation,” and also in Forbes, Vogue Business, PBS, WWD, TechCrunch, MIT Technology Review, Stanford Social Innovation Review, amongst others.
Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist Monica Jahan Bose will lead a hands-on sari climate pledge workshop as part of the exhibition To Live and to Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C. Participants will discuss strategies for climate action and draw, paint, and write climate pledges and climate injustice stories on a hand-woven cotton sari in solidarity with women farmers of coastal Bangladesh, who are on the frontlines of climate change. For over ten years, Bose has been co-creating saris with communities as part of her Storytelling with Saris art and advocacy project. The sari will be used in installations and performances and worn by Bangladeshi women, creating a direct physical and emotional connection that links communities together to fight climate injustice.
Excited to be back at GDS for an assembly for the entire high school. I will give an interactive talk and poetry performance!
Thank to the students for inviting me.
-MJB
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris
Exhibition Dates: September 10-November 4, 2023
Artist Talk: October 21 from 2-3 pm featuring artists Monica Jahan Bose and Stephanie J. Williams
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays 2-6pm + Saturdays 12 noon – 4pm
In this artist talk, former Artist-in-Residence Stephanie J. Williams will discuss and provide insight into her solo exhibition The Pleasure of Wasted Time, followed by a talk with artist Monica Jahan Bose about her exhibition Nourish: Storytelling with Saris. Both exhibitions are on view at The Nicholson Project through November 4th, 2023.
“Animating stop-motion puppets is perhaps the most inefficient way to make my work. It demands my slowness,” says Williams. The Pleasure of Wasted Time reflects on this slowness and the importance of the care that comes with creating stop-motion films. The exhibition features a series of Williams’ stop motion short films along with an installation of the hand-built puppets, sculptures, and set pieces used in the creation of these films.
Learn more about The Pleasure of Wasted Time.
About Stephanie J. Williams
Stephanie J. Williams is a tinkerer and doodler. Her work primarily navigates hierarchies of taste, unpacking how “official” histories are constructed in order to understand contemporary social coding. She received her MFA in Sculpture from RISD under a Presidential Scholarship, has shown in Fictions, part of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s F-show exhibitions, as well as with Washington Project for the Arts, Lawrence University, the Delaware Contemporary, and the Walters Museum as a Sondheim Finalist, with residencies at the Corporation of Yaddo, Sculpture Space, Williams College, the Nicholson Project, VCCA, and ACRE. Recent projects have screened at the New Orleans Film Festival (Best Animated Short, 2022), Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival (Jury Citation, 2022), the Atlanta Film Festival (2023), and Outfest LA LGBTQIA+ Film Festival (2023). She has received support from the Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund in Media Studies at Johns Hopkins University and multiple DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities Fellowships. She is based in DC/Baltimore and currently teaches stop motion as Full Time Faculty for Maryland Institute College of Art. For more information, visit www.stephaniejwilliams.com.
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris is an installation of video, drawings, poems, and saris inspired by plants and herbs. Touching the soil and growing food are grounding and nourishing. For the last two years, Bangladeshi-American artist Monica Jahan Bose and DC participants in her Storytelling with Saris project have been connecting with the soil and Earth and food justice issues by nurturing plants on windowsills and planting neighborhood vegetable gardens. This year they planted and harvested in the garden at The Nicholson Project. Bose led a series of planting workshops that included poetry and art inspired by soil and plants. Using performance, sari art, writing, and film, Storytelling with Saris, which commenced in 2012, links DC residents with Bangladeshi coastal women farmers in solidarity to address climate and food injustice.
Learn more about Nourish: Storytelling with Saris.
About Monica Jahan Bose
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, film, performance, and public art. Her socially engaged work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops, art actions, and temporary installations and performances. Bose uses the sari—a precolonial 18-foot-long unstitched garment that is always recycled and never discarded—to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. She has exhibited her work extensively in the US and internationally (20 solo shows, numerous group exhibitions, and more than 25 performances) including solo exhibitions at the Bangladesh National Museum and MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. Her ongoing collaborative project Storytelling with Saris with women farmers from her ancestral island village has traveled to 10 states and seven countries and engaged thousands of people. Her work has appeared in the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, Art Asia Pacific, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Honolulu Star Advertiser, the Japan Times, and all major newspapers in Bangladesh. She has a BA in the Practice of Art (Painting) from Wesleyan University, a post-graduate Diploma in Art from Santiniketan, India, and a JD from Columbia Law School.
This project was supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
Also please support our wonderful local bookstore, which is hosting this official event.
https://www.politics-prose.com/noorjahan-bose
NOORJAHAN BOSE – Noorjahan Bose (she/her) is a feminist writer, social worker, and activist, living between the US and Bangladesh. She is the founder of two US-based organizations to empower South Asian women, ASHA (now Ashiyanaa) and Samhati. She has a BA (Honors) in Bangla literature from Dhaka University and a Masters in Social Work from Catholic University in Washington DC. She worked for many years as a social worker with refugees and the elderly at Catholic Charities, with foster children for Prince Georges Country, MD, and with ICU patients at DC General Hospital. She also founded the first Bangla School in the DC area, running it out of her home for more than 10 years.
Please stop by for the final day of “Nourish: Storytelling with Saris”! Monica Jahan Bose will be there during gallery hours from noon to 4 pm and will be happy to give you a tour of the exhibition.
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris
Location: The Nicholson Project, 2310 Nicholson Project SE, Washington DC, Bus B2 and many others
Exhibition Dates: September 10-November 4, 2023
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays 2-6pm + Saturdays 12 noon – 4pm
Link to Washington Post Review.
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris is an installation of video, drawings, poems, saris, and kanthas inspired by plants and herbs. Touching the soil and growing food are grounding and nourishing. For the last two years, Bangladeshi-American artist Monica Jahan Bose and DC participants in her Storytelling with Saris project have been connecting with the soil and Earth and food justice issues by nurturing plants on windowsills and planting neighborhood vegetable gardens. This year they planted and harvested in the garden at The Nicholson Project. Bose led a series of planting workshops that included poetry and art inspired by soil and plants. Using performance, sari art, writing, and film, Storytelling with Saris, which commenced in 2012, links DC residents with Bangladeshi coastal women farmers in solidarity to address climate and food injustice. There is a concurrent exhibition by Stephanie J. Williams.
Monica Jahan Bose bio: Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, film, performance, and public art. Her socially engaged work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops, art actions, and temporary installations and performances. Bose uses the sari — a precolonial 18-foot-long unstitched garment that is always recycled and never discarded — to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. She has exhibited her work extensively in the US and internationally (20 solo shows, numerous group exhibitions, and more than 25 performances) including solo exhibitions at the Bangladesh National Museum and MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. Her ongoing collaborative project STORYTELLING WITH SARIS with women farmers from her ancestral island village has travelled to 10 states and seven countries and engaged thousands of people. Her work has appeared in the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, Art Asia Pacific, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Honolulu Star Advertiser, the Japan Times, and all major newspapers in Bangladesh. She has a BA in the Practice of Art (Painting) from Wesleyan University, a post-graduate Diploma in Art from Santiniketan, India, and a JD from Columbia Law School.
This project was supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics in collaboration with the Earth Commons presents, When Will the Water Come – an evening of readings, short plays, monologues, poetry, and music about water and our environment, featuring students from Professor Derek Goldman’s TPST/ CULP 2036 Global Performance and Politics course, as well as professional guest artists, curated and directed by Ashanee Kottage, Lab/Earth Commons Fellow.
Location: 1801 35th St NW, Washington, DC 20007 (the old Fillmore School, in Glover Park)
Date/Time: Monday November 6, 2023, 4:30 to 6:30 pm. Monica Jahan Bose’s short performance is in the very beginning.
The performance brings together an expansive range of cultural perspectives, theatrical forms, and narratives to explore the scientific, political, elemental, and intimately personal dimensions of water. This multi-disciplinary performance and roundtable event features material from the recently launched We Hear You–A Climate Archive, a global performance project exploring youth perspectives on the climate emergency and the 2023 Climate Change Theater Action a worldwide festival of short plays about the climate crisis presented biennially to coincide with the United Nations COP meetings. This event is also part of an ongoing suite of activities featuring student and professional performances curated by The Lab leading up to COP 28, including the forthcoming conference Sustaining the Oasis: Envisioning the Future of Water Security in the Gulf, to be held at the Georgetown campus in Qatar.
We are honored that the following guest artists and students will share their work with us and join us for a roundtable discussion (moderated by Prof. Derek Goldman and Ashanee Kottage) and reception with some light refreshments at the end of the performance.
Chantal Bilodeau – Founder of CCTA
LubDub Theater (Miranda Rose Hall, Caitlin Nasema Cassidy (We Hear You Project Director), Robert Duffley (We Hear You Project Dramaturg), Geoff Kanick)
We Hear You Stories:
Nadia’s story, THE HORIZON
Michael’s story, COME BACK ANOTHER DAY
Rebecca’s story, MANTA MAGIC
Swedian’s story, WHEN WILL THE WATER COME?
CCTA Plays:
Wild Parsnips by Tira Palmquist
la jiao pang xie, shao la (“chilli crab, less spicy”) by Dia Hakim K
Undertow by Keith Barker
A Hummingbird’s Ululation by Aleya Kassam
(up)rooted by Caity Shea-Violette
To request an accommodation, inquiries about accessibility, or if you have any questions/ issues getting to the space please email us at globallab@georgetown.edu.
Monica Jahan Bose will create a sari installation called “Sari Resilience” during the COP28 climate conference in Dubai. It will be part of Hope House in the arts district and accessible to all (no blue or green badge needed).
Dates: November 30-December 11, ,2023.
Address: Jossa, Warehouse 45 Alserkal Avenue – 17th St – Dubai – United Arab Emirates
Interactive Climate Sari workshop: November 30 from 7-10 pm at Open House (RSVP at link below)
Hope House is a “canvas for hope,” a place of rest, resilience, culture and inspiration set in a warehouse space in the vibrant Alserkal arts district in Dubai. All visitors to COP28 are invited to come and join us. More details about Hope House at this link.
Workshop details: Join artist and climate activist Monica Jahan Bose for interactive storytelling and art-making on a six-meter-long Bangladeshi sari. We will be composing short poems and making art together about climate hope in solidarity with coastal women farmers on Barobaishdia Island in Bangladesh. This hands-on art workshop builds cross-border community and climate resilience as part of the decade-long Storytelling with Saris art and advocacy project.
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, film, performance, and installation. Her socially engaged work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops, art actions, installations and performances. Monica uses the sari — a precolonial 18-foot-long unstitched garment that is always recycled and never discarded — to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. She has exhibited her work extensively in the US and internationally including solo exhibitions at the Bangladesh National Museum and MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome. Her decade-long collaborative project STORYTELLING WITH SARIS with women farmers from her ancestral island village has traveled to eight countries and 11 US states, engaging thousands of people. She has a BA in the Practice of Art (Painting) from Wesleyan University, a Diploma in Art from Santiniketan, India, and a JD from Columbia Law School.
