Events
It’s time to celebrate Earth Day all month long! Join us for a planting, poetry, and art workshop at The Nicholson Project’s garden. We will be cleaning and planting the garden with Kendra Hazel, the new Garden Manager at Nicholson. Artist Monica Jahan Bose will lead us in creating poetry and art inspired by the garden. We will have more workshops in the summer with Monica followed by an exhibition and poetry slam at The Nicholson Project in September.
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. ASL will be provided.
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, performance, film, and interdisciplinary projects. Her social practice work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops and temporary public art installations and performances. She is the creator of STORYTELLING WITH SARIS, a long-term art and advocacy project with her ancestral village of Katakhali, Bangladesh. 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.
Kendra Hazel is the 2023 Garden Manager at The Nicholson Project. She is an herb enthusiast, urban garden educator, and a plant based chef. She studied Health Science at Florida A&M University, has worked with neighborhood community gardens independently and as the Community Garden Spaces manager with City Blossoms, and recently founded Green Things Work where she shares her holistic approach to wellness.
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.
This project is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Image: Planting workshop for Sustain, © 2022 Monica Jahan Bose, photo credit: Paris Preston.
Join us for a planting, poetry, and art workshop at The Nicholson Project’s garden. We will be cleaning and planting the garden with Kendra Hazel, the new Garden Manager at Nicholson. Artist Monica Jahan Bose will lead us in creating poetry and art inspired by the garden. We will have more workshops in the summer with Monica followed by an exhibition and poetry slam at The Nicholson Project in September.
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. ASL will be provided.
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist whose work spans painting, printmaking, performance, film, and interdisciplinary projects. Her social practice work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops and temporary public art installations and performances. She is the creator of STORYTELLING WITH SARIS, a long-term art and advocacy project with her ancestral village of Katakhali, Bangladesh. 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.
Kendra Hazel is the 2023 Garden Manager at The Nicholson Project. She is an herb enthusiast, urban garden educator, and a plant based chef. She studied Health Science at Florida A&M University, has worked with neighborhood community gardens independently and as the Community Garden Spaces manager with City Blossoms, and recently founded Green Things Work where she shares her holistic approach to wellness.
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.
This project is supported in part by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.
Image: Planting workshop for Sustain, © 2022 Monica Jahan Bose, photo credit: Paris Preston.
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.
Please join me at this exhibition, for which two of my works have been commissioned. Five leading Bangladeshi artists are sending a message to GE and demanding a fossil fuel free future, with a new Boston-based art exhibition titled ‘Electric Bangladesh: Fossil Free Futures’. DETAILS HERE
Through our artwork, we are calling on GE to end its greenwashing – claiming to be green while backing massive fossil gas projects – and instead back clean renewable energy in Bangladesh.
Presented by Climarte and commissioned by Market Forces, the exhibition will run from 1-4 August at the Point Gallery at @CambridgeFoundry in Boston – right around the corner from GE’s new headquarters.
Join us for a short film and a feature length film followed by Q&A with feminist filmmakers/artists Indrani Nayar-Gall and Monica Jahan Bose.
Happy hour starts at 6:30 pm and films start at 7:15 pm
There will be wine and snacks provided but outside food and drink is welcome. Both films are fully captioned.
String of Stories
a film by Indrani Nayar-Gall (72 minutes) presents the ordeals of three women who have been victims of the Devadasi tradition. The nonlinear treatment of the film provides a glimpse into the insidious ways in which the system works, especially how it has ruined their lives. These women, who hail from the least privileged sections of society, have been sacrificed at the altar of this illegal practice. Scarred by their experiences, they find themselves stripped of the fundamental rights to safety and education. Will they be able to rise above it and turn their lives around?
Dreaming In Green
a film by Leena Jayaswal (in collaboration with Monica Jahan Bose) about the Storytelling with Saris
ecofeminist art project. Commissioned by the Smithsonian for the Futures exhibition (3:43 minutes)
Monica Jahan Bose will be participating in the the third annual Women’s Environmental Leadership (WEL) summit taking place from Thursday September 14 through Sunday September 17, 2023, in Washington D.C. The summit is a signature program of The Center for Environmental Justice at the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum (CEJ). Launched this past Earth Day, the Center builds on the work of the Urban Waterways Project, which for twelve years explored and documented the relationship between urban waterways and their surrounding communities. WEL was launched in 2018 to build capacity for future women environmental leadership. Through summits, community forums, lectures, and oral histories, a national network of environmental leaders and young women have explored the importance of mentorship, various educational and career opportunities, and the multitude of ways in which leadership is enacted. The launch of the Center and the WEL summit are part of our museum’s focus on Our Environment,
Our Future, a year-long celebration of programming which includes the exhibition To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington D.C., and the first cohort of our Environmental Justice Academy. Over the course of the summit, we will welcome attendees for an opening Dinner & Discussion, two days of panels and workshops, and a day of field trips, all designed to empower the next generation with the knowledge, skillsets, and inspiration they need to take the next steps in their personal and professional pathways.
Monica will be a panelist on September 16, for the session, The Arts, Environmental Advocacy, and Activism. Discussion will explore the role of the Arts in environmental advocacy and activism through an exploration of how the environmental experiences of artists inform media and messaging, the various spaces such work can inhabit, and how such engagement serves to make environmental practice more accessible.
Image: This digital artwork by Amir Khadar has been commissioned as a mural by the Smithsonian’s Anacostia Community Museum for the exhibit To Live and Breathe: Women and Environmental Justice in Washington, D.C.
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.
Excited to be back at GDS for an assembly for the entire high school. I will give an interactive talk and poetry performance!
Thank to the students for inviting me.
-MJB
Please stop by for the final day of “Nourish: Storytelling with Saris”! Monica Jahan Bose will be there during gallery hours from noon to 4 pm and will be happy to give you a tour of the exhibition.
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris
Location: The Nicholson Project, 2310 Nicholson Project SE, Washington DC, Bus B2 and many others
Exhibition Dates: September 10-November 4, 2023
Gallery Hours: Wednesdays 2-6pm + Saturdays 12 noon – 4pm
Link to Washington Post Review.
Nourish: Storytelling with Saris is an installation of video, drawings, poems, saris, and kanthas inspired by plants and herbs. Touching the soil and growing food are grounding and nourishing. For the last two years, Bangladeshi-American artist Monica Jahan Bose and DC participants in her Storytelling with Saris project have been connecting with the soil and Earth and food justice issues by nurturing plants on windowsills and planting neighborhood vegetable gardens. This year they planted and harvested in the garden at The Nicholson Project. Bose led a series of planting workshops that included poetry and art inspired by soil and plants. Using performance, sari art, writing, and film, Storytelling with Saris, which commenced in 2012, links DC residents with Bangladeshi coastal women farmers in solidarity to address climate and food injustice. There is a concurrent exhibition by Stephanie J. Williams.
Monica Jahan Bose bio: 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 (20 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 10 states and seven 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.
This project was supported by the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities.
