Events
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.
