Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist Monica Jahan Bose will lead a hands-on sari  workshop with high school students at Georgetown Day School addressing environmental and gender justice.  Participants will discuss strategies for climate action and gender justice and draw, paint, and write on a hand-woven cotton sari from Bangladesh.  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. This is a private workshop for students at the school.

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.

Location: Entertainment + Culture Pavilion, Expo City, Blue Zone B7, Building 90 (same building as Women & Gender and Youth Pavilion), Ground Floor.

If you are going to COP28 in Dubai and have a Blue Zone pass, please join us at The Entertainment + Culture Pavilion (Blue Zone) and check out my sari installation and all the amazing programming.  I will also be doing a performance for the opening ceremony of the E+C Pavilion at around 10:30 am on November 30th and a multimedia storytelling and interactive sari workshop on December 2 at 4:30 to 5:30 pm.

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.