Events
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!
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.
“Take Me to the Water” by Monica Jahan Bose. Curated by Beth Ferraro.
Location: Gallery Y, 1325 W St NW, Washington, DC 20009
Opening Reception: Friday, May 2, 2025 from 6-8 pm
Artist’s Talk and Workshop: Saturday, June 21, 2025 from 3-5 pm
Exhibition Dates: May 2-July 11, 2025. Gallery hours: Monday to Friday 7 am – 9 pm, Saturdays & Sundays 7 am – 7 pm.
Curator Statement:
Take Me to the Water is an invitation to listen to the stories Monica Jahan Bose has collected from Katakhali Village and Washington, DC that impact us all. This exhibit speaks to our deep connection to water, the need to protect it, and reminds us of our memories with water.
Bose’s saris and kanthas invoke a floating monument of community action and resilience. She brings together art, activism, and community engagement with each embroidered kantha, sari, poem, song, performance, and work on paper. This immersive experience blends together all these creative practices and highlights her commitment to her long-time collaborative project, Storytelling with Saris, which she began in 2012.
As a curator, I am drawn to how Monica Jahan Bose’s work is rooted in storytelling and the technique with which she engages traditional forms. As a water person, I feel a deep resonance with her incorporation of water as both subject and medium — its symbolism, its urgency, and its connective power across cultures and bodies.
Artist statement:
My work draws on my family’s roots in Katakhali Village, Barobaishdhia Island, which is surrounded by multiple rivers and the Bay of Bengal. After moving to the Washington area, I spent my youth with my friends exploring and playing at the C&O Canal, Great Falls, the Potomac River, and neighborhood pools. I discovered the Talking Heads in the late 1970’s in middle school, and listened to “Take Me to the River” all the time. Water is a recurring theme in my work, speaking to the essentiality of water to life, its healing properties, its centrality in climate change, and its ability to destroy our homes, crops, and heritage.
“Take Me to the Water” presents a new body of work in keeping with my continuing practice. I created a series of canvas paintings called “Water,” starting in 2006. My ongoing socially engaged project Storytelling with Saris works (started in 2012) involves working in collaboration with women from my ancestral island along with residents of DC to create saris, climate pledges, poems, performances, and installations that speak to the intersection of climate, gender, and racial justice. I use the precolonial sari as a symbol of sustainability and renewal. Blue saris represent water, pools, and rivers.
In this exhibition, I have created new work using painting, embroidery, woodblock, and collage, reusing saris from the Storytelling with Saris project, including a faded sari from the pool-shaped installation at the “Swimming”public art project (2024, Marie Reed Plaza and Aquatic Center). The saris from my ongoing work have been used in multiple installations and performances, and worn by Katakhali women. Several used saris were cut, layered in three, and embroidered by me and the Katakhali women to create “kanthas,” a traditional art form where Bangladeshi women recycle old saris to create blankets and wraps. Woodblocks that I have designed have been repeated on the saris, the works on paper, and the kanthas. The exhibition also includes a new performance film “Rising Up.”
“Take Me to the Water” speaks to our deep connection to water, and the need to protect our waters and our planet.
Artist 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 and internationally (24 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 Al,o 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.
Curator Bio
Beth Ferraro is a social art practitioner, curator, photographer, and creative facilitator with a focus on community impact and engagement. She has a BFA in Photography and Design from the Rochester Institute of Technology and worked in journalism as a Photo Editor with several publications, including Newsweek and Flaunt magazines. Following her time in New York City and Australia, she was the Creative Director and Curator at Honfleur Gallery and Vivid Solutions Gallery in Anacostia for seven years. Ferraro has also managed residency programs, artists’ studios, pop-up spaces, and placemaking projects in partnership with communities. Recently, she served as a Cultural & Art Coordinator for an Artisan in Residence pilot program with the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the National Museum of Asian Art, working with artisans from Armenia, India, the United Arab Emirates, Mongolia, Tibet, Japan, and China.
Ferraro has worked with numerous organizations on site-specific public art initiatives, community projects, public programs, and art installations including the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Smithsonian’s Arts and Industries Building, Martha’s Table, Department of Energy and Environment, Culture House DC, Building Bridges Across the River at THEARC, Southwest Business Improvement District, Van Alen Institute, City First Foundation, and Washington Project for the Arts.
Since 2019, Ferraro has been the Creative Director & Curator at Gallery Y at the YMCA Anthony Bowen. Ferraro has lived in the District of Columbia since 2004. She is also a yoga teacher for seniors, a swimmer, a paddleboarder, a novice gardener, and an avid bicyclist.
This project 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, Marie Reed Plaza, 2201 18th St NW, June 6 from 6 pm to 7:30 pm
Link to Register for the June 6 Performance
7. Culminating event: international march with massive “Weaving Resistance” sari from Lincoln Memorial to the Capitol on Sunday June 8, from 10 am to 12 noon. Meet at Foggy Bottom Metro between 9:30 am & 10 am. Step off at 10 am to go to Lincoln Memorial.
Please join Storytelling with Saris for the launch of World Pride DC 2025 with a special workshop hosted by Moms Clean Air Force. We will be discussing human rights and equality for all genders and sexualities and the negative impact of climate change and plastics on the LGBTQ+ community and women. The workshop will be appropriate for all ages and we will create art and poetry together and transfer our creativity to a 19-foot-long cotton sari from Bangladesh. Light refreshments will be served. Workshop hosted by Moms Clean Air Force ℅ EDF, 555 12th Street NW, May 16 from 5:30 to 7 pm You will need to sign in at the lobby and show ID. Ask the receptionist to go upstairs to EDF for a workshop.
Please email storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com with any questions or accommodation needs.
“Weaving Resistance: Storytelling with Saris”
In this moment of human rights crisis created by the current US 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 12 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.
All the Weaving Resistance events:
1. Workshop hosted by Moms Clean Air Force, 555 12th Street NW, May 16 from 5:30 to 7 pm
2. Display of artwork Prokash/Reveal Sari Scroll on gender/sexuality/identity at World Pride Headquarters, 901 7th Street NW, 4th Floor, Washington, DC 20001, from May 17-June 8, open noon to 8 pm most days
3. Workshop hosted by Asian Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Group, May 29 from 6:00 to 7:30 pm
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.
5. Drop in workshop at the Human Rights Conference at JW Marriott, 1331 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, June 5 from 10 am to 2 pm
6. Outdoor “Weaving Resistance” community sewing performance, June 6 during the 17th Street Dupont Circle Block Party, 5 to 8 pm
7. Culminating event: international march with massive “Weaving Resistance” sari to the Capitol on June 8
This project is supported and sponsored by Capital Pride Alliance.
Community. partners: Human Rights Campaign, Moms Clean Air Force, and Asian/Pacific Islander Domestic Violence Resource Project.
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 11th 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
