Events
“DC Art Now” Exhibition
DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, I St Gallery, 200 I Street, SE, Washington DC; metro: Waterfront
Hours: Monday -Friday, 9 am to 5:30 pm, from September 20-December 13, 2025
This is an exciting exhibition of art by DC area artists being considered for the Washington DC Art Bank public art collection to be displayed in DC government buildings. There are dozens of artists in the show, selected by a panel of 18 judges. We are thrilled to see the collaborative “Capitol Kantha” on display. It is made from a sari that was part of the 2019 WRAPture installation, then later worn by a Bangladeshi woman farmer on Barobaishdia Island, and then cut, layered in three, and embroidered, painted and printed by women of the island and Monica Jahan Bose. The original sari also has woodblock by people of DC. Saris are never discarded. When worn thin or torn, they are cut, layered in three, and embroidered into blankets, swaddles, shawls, and wall hangings called kanthas.
The 2024 Women’s Environmental Leadership Summit is a two-day virtual event hosted by Smithsonian’s Center for Environmental Justice at the Anacostia Community Museum. It will take place from October 18-19, 2024 via Zoom meetings. The summit aims to bring together individuals for mentorship, education, training, and leadership opportunities in the field of environmental justice.
Join Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist Monica Jahan Bose for a hands-on workshop focused on the power of art and poetry to build climate resilience and hope. In this workshop, we will learn how to connect with the Earth and recenter ourselves towards unity with other creatures, soil, plants, and farmer women in Bangladesh, as part of the global climate justice art project Storytelling with Saris, ongoing for more than a decade. We will reflect on our own climate stories and actions, create short and long form poems, pledges, and writings, have a collective poetry slam, and transform our poems into visual poems incorporating imagery and color. The final works will be finished and shared on Day Two as a virtual exhibition and performance. The works will also be shared with the participants, the Smithsonian, and as part of the Storytelling with Saris project. No prior experience in poetry or art is needed. Please come ready to share your positive energy for the Earth and our sisters across the planet.
The workshop is in two parts — October 18 from 1:45 to 3:15 pm and October 19 from 1:45 to 2:45 pm.
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 workshops will take place in February 2025 in Bangladesh. The workshops will include sari printing, letter writing to the government, new song creation, and performance.
Stay tuned for the Paglees show in North Carolina! Link to Review of debut show in Chicago.
Location: McColl Center, 721 N Tryon St, Charlotte, NC 28202
Opening Reception: May 22, 2025
Public lecture by Prof. Melia Belli-Bose: June 12, 2025
The Paglees: Between Reason and Madness
The Paglees is a feminist collective of artists of South Asian origin living across the United States. Paglee or pagli means crazy woman in a number of South Asian languages.
In their debut exhibition, The Paglees investigate – with fierceness, beauty, and wit – the impact on women of generations of patriarchy, religion, white supremacy, colonialism, violence, capitalism, and environmental plunder.
The title of the exhibition derives from Rosa Parks’ words: “There is just so much hurt, disappointment and oppression one can take. The bubble of life grows larger. The line between reason and madness grows thinner.” (Rosa Parks: Writings, Notes and Statements,1956-58).
Featuring mixed-media works on paper, fabric, and canvas, sculpture, performance, photography, installation, and moving image, The Paglees: Between Reason and Madness, questions and reframes the labeling of non-conforming women as crazy and the marginalization of immigrant women of color. This collective exhibition presents new decolonial narratives that center the reason and wisdom of brown women of the Global South and diaspora, and provide pathways to a creative feminist future. The Paglees believe in working in collaboration with other marginalized communities to build bridges and demand social, environmental, and legal justice for all.
The seven Paglees are South Asian American artists living and working across North America: Shelly Bahl (New York City and Toronto, Canada), Monica Jahan Bose (Washington, DC), Fawzia Khan (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Indrani Nayar-Gall (Charlotte, North Carolina), Renluka Maharaj (Denver, Colorado), Nirmal Raja (Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Boston, Massachusetts), and Pallavi Sharma (San Ramos, California). We are diasporic South Asians with roots in Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, and Trinidad & Tobago.
