The Business of Public Art
Friday, January 31, 2025
11 am – 12:30 pm ET
Virtual via Zoom

Join Public Art Coordinator Kerry Kennedy and three art professionals—Monica Jahan Bose, Jessie Himmelrich, and Antoine Williams—as they share their experiences navigating the unique challenges of creating art in the District. From communicating an artist’s vision to writing grant applications, engaging the community, and installing public art, the process demands a diverse and intricate skill set.

Discover what it takes to successfully navigate the Public Art Building Communities (PABC) grant application and bring stunning artworks to life in the Nation’s Capital.

For full details and to RSVP please visit dcarts.dc.gov or grab the direct link from our Linktree in our bio!

Storytelling with Saris workshops will take place in February 2025 in Bangladesh.  The workshops will include sari printing, new kantha creations from worn saris from Storytelling with Saris, new song creation, and performance.

Please come to the unveiling of Monica Jahan Bose’s first ceramic sari, called “Rising,” which will be installed in the Kalorama Triangle alley behind her studio. The ceramic tile mural will be mounted on the garage wall of the home of Mary Miller and Dennis Farley. We will have an unveiling celebration on March 9 from 3-5 pm in the alley behind 2015 and 2017 Belmont Rd, NW. Monica’s studio will also be open and there will be a film screening of the performances that inspired the “Rising” ceramic work.

“Rising” speaks to our connection as humans with the outdoor environment, including the water, the trees, and other species.  It is designed with ceramic tiles using the same techniques and design concepts as the Storytelling with Saris saris.  As in the fabric saris, the border tiles feature woodblock patterns. The tiles were rolled out by hand out of reclaimed clay.  Monica pressed her sari woodblocks into the wet clay to create impressions. These border tiles were then handpainted using wax resist technique.  The middle tiles of the sari comprise a figurative painting that Monica painted by hand using glazes.

Monica worked with ceramic artist and fabricator Elle Brande of Moonlight Studios in Beltsville, Maryland to create the work over the course of several months.   Monica and Elle were colleagues at Red Dirt Studio many years ago and Elle assisted Monica in some of her very first performances with saris.  We are thrilled to share this brand new work with the community. It serves as a small-scale prototype for future projects.

It’s Earth Day on April 22 and Storytelling with Saris continues its tradition of organizing a workshop and gathering.  Join us for a poetry, earthing, and art workshop at Kalorama Park in Adams Morgan. We will be doing movement and breathing exercises, writing some poetry, and making art on a sari. Workshop will be followed by a pizza picnic in the park.  We will be at one of the picnic tables.  Enter the park from Columbia Road to avoid stairs.  Nearest building is 1851 Columbia Rd NW, Washington, DC 20009.  Metro: Woodley Park-Zoo.  Buses: 90, 96, 42, 43.  Friends and family welcome!

Please sign up at this link.

If you have joined prior Storytelling with Saris workshops, please bring with you your folder of materials — journal, pencil etc. Looking forward to seeing you!  Please email storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com with any questions or accommodation needs.

This project is supported by a grant from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.

Image from 2023 Earth Day Rally.  Pictured, Lia Totty.   Above: Image from 2024 Earth Day Workshop.

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.

Join the Phillips@THEARC and Monica Jahan Bose for a special event at the Anacostia River Festival

Anacostia River Festival 2025

Sankofa on the River: Bridging Legacies

Organized by 11^th Street Bridge Park

Location:

Anacostia Park, Good Hope Road SE & Anacostia Drive SE . If you’re planning to take the Metro, get off at Anacostia Station on the Green/Yellow line. If you’re planning on driving, you can park at Anacostia Station.

From River to River in collaboration with Monica Jahan Bose

18-foot-long blue Bangladeshi saris are laid out on long tables, and the community joins together to make collaborative art work with painting, writing, and wood-block printing, expressing their intentions to protect and enjoy the Anacostia River and honor its history.

Bio:  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, and temporary installations and performances. She has exhibited her work extensively in the US andinternationally (23 solo shows, five large-scale public art projects, and more than 25 performances) including solo exhibitions at the Bangladesh National Museum and MACRO Museum of Contemporary Art Rome.

 Her ongoing decade-long collaborative art and advocacy project STORYTELLING WITH SARIS with women farmers from her ancestral island village has traveled to eight countries and 12 US states, engaging 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, Prothom Alo and all major newspapers in Bangladesh. The Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum has acquired a collection of her paintings, saris, and archival materials. Monica was an artist delegate to the COP28 climate conference in Dubai, presenting sari installations, workshops, and film screenings. She has a BA in the Practice of Art (Painting) from Wesleyan University, a post-graduate diploma in art from Santiniketan, and a JD from Columbia Law School.

The Paglees are coming to 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 with activations by Shelly Bahl and Monica Jahan Bose.

Public lecture by Prof. Melia Belli-Bose:  June 12, 2025. + performance by Monica Jahan Bose

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 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), Monica Jahan Bose (Washington, DC), Fawzia Khan (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Indrani Nayar-Gall (Charlotte, North Carolina), Renluka Maharaj (Boulder, 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.

NOTICE REGARDING

PROPOSED PUBLIC ART PROJECT

“RESILIENCE”

ARTIST:  MONICA JAHAN BOSE

The art project RESILIENCE proposes to create a hand-made ceramic tile mural at the exterior of 1001 4th Street SW, Washington DC 20024. The tile mural will be affixed on the exterior grey wall on the south side of the building, which is adjacent to a private driveway but viewable from the street. The tile mural would be approximately 4 ft. x 19 ft., the size of a fabric sari. Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist known for her fabric sari installations, and this will be a more permanent sari in ceramic. RESILIENCE will be created using sari woodblocks, hand painting, and stenciled poetry. As part of the project, Bose will lead several community poetry and art workshops. “Resilience” speaks to community resilience in the face of climate change and other challenges, and our deep connection to the water and the environment. Bose will seek a public art grant from DCCAH; the completion of the project is contingent on the grant.

When: The project would be installed in Spring/Summer 2026.

Where: The proposed site for the public art project is the exterior wall at 1001 4th Street SW, Washington DC 20024.

THE “RESILIENCE” PROPOSAL WILL BE PRESENTED AND DISCUSSED AT THE ANC 6D VIRTUAL PUBLIC MEETING ON JUNE 16, 2025 from 7-9 pm.  To attend the meeting use this link: https://dc-gov.zoom.us/j/83836436659

To access the meeting by phone: 1 301 715 8592,  Meeting ID 838 3643 6659

THE PUBLIC IS INVITED TO JOIN AND ASK QUESTIONS AND PROVIDE FEEDBACK.   The project is contingent on receiving grant funding from DCCAH.   Contact:  monicajahanbose@gmail.com storytellingwithsaris.com @storywithsari

LINK TO SLIDE PRESENTATION TO ANC6D.