Events
Join the Storytelling with Saris team to help harvest the vegetables from the Nicholson Project neighborhood garden. We helped out in the garden in the spring and summer, and and are thrilled to go back to see what has been growing. We will do some earthing exercises with Monica Jahan Bose and work with the gardener in residence, Peter Lewis. Location: 2310 Nicholson St, SE, Washington DC. Buses B2, 32, 36. Free street parking available.
Peter Lewis is an avid gardener, artist, and chef. He has been working with Nicholson Project since 2022 and is the main point of contact for garden activities and distribution during peak growing season. Peter also manages seeds starts and runs the Community Composting Program at Koiner Farm in Silver Spring, MD.
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 (23 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 12 US states and eight 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.
The Nicholson Project is an artist residency program and neighborhood garden in Ward 7’s Fairlawn neighborhood. Its mission is to support, provide opportunities, engage, and amplify artists and creatives from our community and the local artist community—particularly artists of color and those from Ward 7 and 8—while engaging our neighbors through community-based programming. Its vision is to serve as a cultural hub and community anchor celebrating Ward 7’s authentic identity, while infusing new vibrancy into Southeast DC. We hope to inspire others to use similar non-traditional arts and community-centered projects as a pathway toward stronger, more vibrant communities.
Stortyelling with Saris is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Storytelling with Saris is thrilled to announce our participation in World Pride DC 2025 and our receipt of a World Pride grant from the Capital Pride Alliance.
. Link to press release from Capital Pride and World Pride DC 2025.
Weaving Resistance: Storytelling with Saris
In this moment of human rights crisis created by the current U.S. administration, it is imperative to build community and fight back for LGBTQ+ rights without apology or retreat. This year’s World Pride theme is The Fabric of Freedom. Textiles have served as modes of resistance for centuries, especially by women and other marginalized groups. Since 2012, the Storytelling with Saris collaborative art project has been using the cotton sari — a 19-foot-long unstitched garment— as a site of community expression of bodily autonomy and gender and climate justice. Cotton saris are covered in woodblock printing, stencils, painting, drawing, embroidery, appliqué, and poetry and then used for large scale installations and performances.
Over the last decade, Storytelling with Saris workshops, performances, and installations have engaged thousands of people in 13 U.S. states and 8 countries, including Bangladesh, Canada, France, Greece, and Italy. Recent Storytelling with Saris projects, performances, workshops, and roundtables in the U.S. and Bangladesh have specifically focused on LGBTQ+ issues, gender roles and identity, bodily autonomy, and increasing understanding and acceptance of gender-nonconforming persons through discussion, education, and collaborative art and performance.
For World Pride 2025, Storytelling with Saris will present five healing and empowering art and poetry workshops on gender/sexuality/identity to foster greater inclusion, empathy, and pride in this difficult political climate. The workshops will culminate in a community performance and march. We are partnering with Human Rights Campaign, Moms Clean Air Force, and Asian Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Group. ASL is available for all events. All events in accessible spaces. Please contact storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com for any accommodation requests.
Weaving Resistance: Storytelling with Saris Events
Register for all events at this link on EVENTBRITE.
1. Workshop hosted by Moms Clean Air Force, 555 12th Street NW, May 16 from 5:30 to 7 pm. ASL confirmed.
2. Display of artwork Prokash/Reveal Sari Scroll on gender/sexuality/identity at World Pride Welcome Center, 737 7th Street NW (Gallery Place Metro). Washington, DC 20021, from May 17-June 8, Open Saturday, May 17th & Sunday, May 18th
12:00 PM – 8:00 PM; Saturday, May 24th & Sunday, May 25th 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM; May 30th – June 8th, open daily from
12:00 PM – 8:00 PM
Link to World Pride Welcome and Visual Arts Center
3. Workshop hosted by Asian Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Group, May 29 from 6:00 to 7:30 pm; ASL requested.
4. Drop in workshops at World Pride DC HQ hosted by Human Rights Campaign, 737 7th St NW, May 31, 12:00pm to 3:00pm and June 1 from 12:00pm to 2:00pm. Drop in and contribute to the World Pride saris with art and poetry. ASL requested.
Link to register for workshop on May 31
Link to register for workshop on June 1
5. Drop in workshop at the Human Rights Conference at JW Marriott, 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, June 5 from 10 am to 2 pm
Link to register for the Conference
6. Outdoor “Weaving Resistance” community sewing performance, June 6 during the 17th Street Dupont Circle Block Party, 5 to 8 pm
Link to Register for the Performance
7. Culminating event: international march with massive “Weaving Resistance” sari to the Capitol on June 8
