“Dreaming in Green” a film by Leena Jayaswal about the Storytelling with Saris project and its work with Project Create was commissioned by the Smithsonian for its FUTURES exhibition at the Smithsonian Arts & Industries building in Washington, DC. The 3-minute film film is part of a series of 8 short films “The Futures We Dream” shown in a 30-minute loop in the second room with “Futures that Unite” written on the arch, directly behind the main entrance after the central rotunda. Dates from November 21, 2021 to July 6, 2022. Free and open daily from 10 am to 5:30 am (EXCEPT TUESDAYS).  Until 7 pm on Fridays and Saturdays.

The final closing party is all day long until 11 pm on July 6, 2022.  Details and registration here.

I St Gallery of DCCAH
200 I Street SE, Washington, DC

Curator: Sarah Gordon

Monday – Friday, 9:00 am – 6:00 pm ET
Masks are required

May 9 – July 1, 2022

With social injustice a common theme around the world, we are also currently witnessing the injustices committed against our natural environment. Like our ancestors, we sense nature’s vastness, yet we lack the same respect those indigenous peoples had for nature as a sentient being. We take the Earth’s vastness for granted. What we experience as nature pushing back is nature seeking balance.

With this exhibit, Fragile Beauty, 33 DC artists seek to bring a sense of balance to an array of environmental injustices. Their art and their vision advocate awareness, mindfulness, consciousness, and stewardship, offering pathways towards personal partnership with our planet. They tell their stories with painting, sculpture, prints, photography, and installations. They inform us of both the joyful and the sorrowful, the woeful and the hopeful. Their work will challenge, enlighten, and inform your sense of wonder for exploring the beauty, power, and magnificent mystery of our home planet. We thank these artists for their commitment to illuminating the importance of nurturing and protecting the fragile beauty of the place we all call home.

Fragile Beauty is the first juried art exhibition initiated by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities. The new Juried Exhibition Grant provides support for DC artists to exhibit their creative vision to the residents of Washington, DC.   See virtual gallery here.

Please join us for an online watch party premiering the film from the Athens performance in 2018.

On the fourth anniversary of the Storytelling with Saris project in Athens, Greece, we present a 25-minute performance film of our epic two-hour performance that took to the streets of Athens. The performance was led by Monica Jahan Bose in collaboration with Evi Athanasiou and was curated and coordinated by Angeliki Grammatikopoulou. In the performance, we wrote about the concept of “Home” on the windows of the gallery and did movement , rituals, and singing in Greek and Bengali. The piece explores the meaning of “Home” and displacement, climate change, water, migration, belonging, and community. Refugees, immigrants, and other residents of Athens joined the performance. The performance was the closing event of Monica Jahan Bose’s solo exhibition “Footprint/Apotipoma” looking at climate change and migration, curated by Vasia Deliyianni.

The project was supported by the Athens Mayor’s office, Accommodation and Services Scheme for Asylum Seekers, Athens Development & Destination Management Agency, and the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, which receives support from the US National Endowment on the Arts. Special thanks to Leah Stoddard for installation support and to Ambassador Jashim Uddin and the Embassy of Bangladesh for outreach to the Bangladeshi community.

The film was edited by Monica Jahan Bose and Paris Preston.  Register on Eventbrite to receive a notification or just watch directly at Youtube link below (you can also get a Youtube notification — please do subscribe to our Youtube channel.)

Monica Jahan Bose will present short films from her 2019 SUBSISTANCE project in Paris, which was in collaboration with many Parisians and people in Brittany.  Monica and Jahangir will provide a simple Bengali meal and adda, followed by the screening of short films, including the films “Water Resistance” and “Subsistance,” which were created with filmmakers Leena Jayaswal and Paris Preston.  Please join us!

L’artiste et activiste Monica Jahan Bose souhaiterait présenter deux courts-métrages tournés lors de sa visite en France et residence à The Window en 2019 pour le projet «Subsistance: Storytelling with Saris ».  Monica a créé des performances et s’est entretenue avec des Français résident en ville et à la campagne.  Son travail interroge notre consommation, nos perceptions du changement climatique et de la sécurité alimentaire, notamment dans les zones côtières particulièrement vulnérables.

Née en Angleterre, Monica Jahan Bose est une bangladaise-américaine artiste, avocate et activiste.  Elle utilise de nombreux moyens d’expression artistique: peinture, audiovisuel, photo, gravure, et performance. Dans cet esprit, elle tente de marier l’art et la politique. Elle a exposé et fait des installations au Brooklyn Museum et DUMBO Arts Festival (New York), Art Asia Miami et SELECT Art Fair (Floride), Twelve Gates Gallery (Galerie d’art de Philadelphie en Pennsylvanie), au Smithsonian Asia Pacific American Center, au Musée National du Bangladesh, au MACRO (Rome), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington), ainsi que lors d’évènements comme (e)merge art fair.

Actuellement, Monica vit et travaille entre Washington, D.C. et le Bangladesh. Elle a vécu à Paris de 2006 à 2010. Pendant cette période, elle a fait des expositions à la Galerie Deborah Zafman ainsi qu’à l’UNESCO, et a été sélectionnée pour l’exposition du Prix Marin en 2010. Elle est la créatrice de « Storytelling with Saris », un projet artistique collaboratif mené avec les femmes de son village ancestral de Katakhali au Bangladesh, mariant son histoire personnelle et l’art contemporain pour attirer l’attention sur le danger de submersion que la montée des eaux de l’Océan Indien fait peser sur son héritage et son village.

Photo credit:  Amirul Arham.

Join us for a film screening and Bengali meal at Art au Bar in Brittany, France on August 4, 2022 at 8 pm.  We will be showing “Water Resistance” and “Subsistance” addressing climate change and impacts on agriculture and food.

The chef will be preparing a Bengali “plat du jour” based on Monica’s recipes.  You may order drinks and the dinner from the menu.

L’artiste et activiste Monica Jahan Bose souhaiterait présenter deux courts-métrages tournés lors de sa visite en France et residence à The Window en 2019 pour le projet « Storytelling with Saris ».  Monica a créé des performances et s’est entretenue avec des Français résident en ville et à la campagne, notamment avec des fermiers et maraîchers de la vallée de la Rance.  Son travail interroge notre consommation, nos perceptions du changement climatique et de la sécurité alimentaire, notamment dans les zones côtières particulièrement vulnérables.

Monica Jahan Bose est née en Angleterre de parents bengalis, elle est citoyenne du Bangladesh et des États-Unis. Monica Jahan Bose est une artiste, avocate et activiste qui utilise de nombreux moyens d’expression artistique: peinture, audiovisuel, photo, gravure, et performance. Dans cet esprit, elle tente de marier l’art et la politique. Elle a exposé et fait des installations au Brooklyn Museum et DUMBO Arts Festival (New York), Art Asia Miami et SELECT Art Fair (Floride), Twelve Gates Gallery (Galerie d’art de Philadelphie en Pennsylvanie), au Smithsonian Asia Pacific American Center, au Musée National du Bangladesh, au MACRO (Rome), Hirshhorn Museum (Washington), ainsi que lors d’évènements comme (e)merge art fair.

Actuellement, Monica vit et travaille entre Washington, D.C. et le Bangladesh. Elle a vécu à Paris de 2006 à 2010. Pendant cette période, elle a fait des expositions à la Galerie Deborah Zafman ainsi qu’à l’UNESCO, et a été sélectionnée pour l’exposition du Prix Marin en 2010. Elle est la créatrice de « Storytelling with Saris », un projet artistique collaboratif mené avec les femmes de son village ancestral de Katakhali au Bangladesh, mariant son histoire personnelle et l’art contemporain pour attirer l’attention sur le danger de submersion que la montée des eaux de l’Océan Indien fait peser sur son héritage et son village.

Monica Jahan Bose
“Pink Power (Carbon Free)”
2022
Wood block and painting on hand-woven cotton saris, dimensions variable (in collaboration with AU students, other DC residents,
and Bangladeshi women farmers in the Bay of Bengal).

Address: American University, Katzen Center for the Arts, 4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW, Washington DC.  Parking available in Katzen garage for free on weekends and $2 per hour weekdays.  Shuttle available from Tenley Metro (Red Line). Bus N4 and several others.

Exhibition dates:  August 12-September 10, 2022. Open daily from 7 am to 11 pm.

Reception:  Saturday, August 27, 2022 from 7 to 8:30 pm.

The site-specific installation  of six saris hanging from the rotunda includes two climate pledge saris that were part of an outdoor workshop with American University students for AU’s Year of Climate Action and carried to the White House and U.S. Capitol with students rallying with the Sunrise Movement. The 2022 Year of Climate Action is designed to catapult AU to new levels of self-reflection, outreach, and engagement with climate change as an issue and with the communities that climate change touches.  Monica Jahan Bose’s Storytelling with Saris project collaborates with women farmers from her ancestral village in Bangladesh and others around the world to take action on climate and create community and conversation around the issues of climate and gender justice.

Join us for a reception on Saturday, August 27 from 7 to 8:30 pm, featuring a new video piece and discussion with Monica Jahan Bose.

Please join us to hear about the amazing research projects by the 2022 Wherewithal grant recipients.  This regrant is given by the Washington Project for the Arts and is funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation.  Details HERE.
Monica Jahan Bose will be talking about her project  Mukhe Mukhe/Mouth-to-Mouth.

Mukhe Mukhe uncovers and documents the intangible heritage related to songs, poetry, and food in Washington DC and Katakhali, Bangladesh, for the purpose of reframing and presenting the story of climate injustice in two communities.  Bangladeshis face the possible displacement of up to 30 million people, along with massive loss of coastal land and irreplaceable heritage. DC is the center of federal power, but its majority BIPOC residents lack political representation and are disproportionately impacted by climate change and suffer food insecurity.  I will investigate, transcribe, translate, and record village songs in Katakhali and spoken word poetry in DC with the goal of linking high-carbon vs low-carbon communities and drawing attention to their shared struggle in the face of climate injustice and food insecurity. The songs, poems, and food knowledge will be collected, reclaimed, created, and shared. The research will be used for performance/installations that combine text, sound, video, and food

Agenda:
(Each presentation will be 15 min.)

6:30 | Welcome – Nathalie
6:35 | Rasha Abdulhadi
6:50 | Monica Jahan Bose
7:05 | Safiyah Cheatam & Hope Willis
7:20 | Larry Cook
7:35 | Deirdre Darden
7:50 | Rex Delafkaran
8:05 | Armando Lopez-Birca

We’ve had to postpone due to bad weather to THURSDAY October 6.  Join us for an outdoor driveway film screening of an updated version of SUSTAIN, an open studio, and a harvest party.  Come to the back alley behind 2017 Belmont Rd NW, Washington DC 20009.  We will have snacks and beverages.  Metro: Woodley Park-Zoo (Red line), Bus 96, 90, 42, 43 and many more.  Parking is very difficult so we suggest public transportation.  The 40 minute film will be shown at sundown at approximately 7 pm.

ASL interpretation provided.  Please email storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com with questions or accommodation requests.

This event will be postponed in the event of rain.  Please do reply to storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com to let us know whether you are coming.

Looking forward to seeing folks!

Supported by the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.

Photo:  Sustain performance, June 9, 2022, photo credit: Lucian Perkins.

Please join us for a poetry and art workshop with Storytelling with Saris. The workshop is led by Monica Jahan Bose. We will be working on poetry and art inspired by plants and urban gardening.

Everyone age 15 or older who joins at least two workshops will receive a small stipend if you are in the DC area. If you have joined prior Storytelling with Saris workshops, please have with you your folder of materials — journal, pencil etc. Looking forward to seeing you!

ASL interpretation will be provided. Please email storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com with any questions or accommodation needs.

This project is funded the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities.