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.

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.

Join me on Governors Island for the Works on Water Triennial.

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 28, 5-9 pm (Remarks at 7pm)

Exhibition dates: August 28-October 26, 2025

Open Fridays from 2-5:30 pm; Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 5:30 pm | Additional hours by appointment
LMCC’s The Arts Center at Governors Island, Upper & Lower Galleries, 110 Andes Rd, New York, NY 10004
August 28* – October 26
Opening Night: Thursday, August 28, 5-9pm (Remarks at 7pm).   It’s right when you get off the Governors Island ferry from Manhattan (seven minute ride from South Ferry and $5 fare).

Artists roundtable on September 27 at 4-5 pm with Monica Jahan Bose and Dana Harper and the WoW team.

Ride the ferry from South Ferry to Governors Island with Monica Jahan Bose on September 28 at 2 pm and join her for a walkthrough tour of her installation.

Braids & Threads: Connecting Legacies, organized by artists Monica Jahan Bose and Autumn Spears

Location: Washington Project for the Arts,  1350 Connecticut Ave NW (ground floor, wheelchair accessible), Washington DC; metro: Dupont Circle (Red Line), Buses D72, D74 and more.

Opening reception: Saturday, December 13, 2025 from 3-5 pm

Exhibition dates: December 13, 2025 – March 8, 2025.

Gallery hours: Wednesday–Friday, 12–6:00pm, and Saturday, 1:00–5:00pm.

Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) is pleased to present the inaugural project of their new space in Dupont Circle (1350 Connecticut Ave. NW), opening December 13.

Braids & Threads: Connecting Legacies, organized by artists Monica Jahan Bose and Autumn Spears, is a part of WPA’s open call project series, “Lineages: Generations of Creative Resiliencein the District.”

Both Bose and Spears lean into their diasporic heritage in their practices, incorporating skills they learned from their elders: sewing/textiles (Bose) crocheting and hair braiding techniques (Spears).

Their ongoing conversations—across generations, between Gen X and Gen Z—have opened up new energy and direction in both of their practices. This is their first collaboration.

 For this project, Bose and Spears will engage in a series of conversations—some recorded as podcasts—about the relevance of exploring connection with heritage, mothers, and ancestors. Together, they will consider how weaving inherited knowledge into contemporary work can promote resilience.Using the concepts, stories, and ideas arising from these conversations, the two artist-organizers will create an installation in WPA’s project space using multilingual text, embroidery, braiding, sewing, fiber art and printmaking. It will be an evolving exhibition and work-space, where other artists and community members are invited to drop in and contribute with their own stories and art-making.

Braids & Threads: Connecting Legacies will begin on Saturday, December 13, 2025 with an

Opening Reception from 3:00–5:00pm. Attendees are invited to bring vintage vinyl to play along with the artists’ selection of intergenerational grooves. The project will be presented in

WPA’s new location in Dupont Circle, 1350 Connecticut Avenue NW, Washington DC.

Please note that the space will be closed from December 21, 2025 through January 6, 2026 for the winter holidays.

Learn more about public programs and the artists below. More information can be here.

Public Programs

A regular weekly Tea Time with the artists, on Fridays from 3:00–5:00pm, will welcome visitors to join in conversation and collaborate on the evolving installation. Workshops focused on crocheting and block printing will also occur onsite throughout the project’s duration. Additional public programming will take place offsite, to be announced soon.

About the Organizing Artists

Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and activist whose work spans performance, painting, printmaking, film, and installation. Her socially engaged work highlights the intersection of climate, racial, gender, and economic injustice through co-created workshops,installations, and performances. 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. She has been awarded five large-scale public art grants in DC, each centering community co-creation and featuring multiple workshops, film/projections, performances, and site-specific installation.

Her ongoing collaborative art and advocacy project Storytelling with Saris, started in 2012 with women farmers from her ancestral island village, has traveled to eight countries and 13 US states, engaging thousands of people. Her work has appeared in The Miami Herald, The Washington Post, BBC, 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, woodblocks, and archival materials. She has a BA in studio art and mathematics from Wesleyan University, a diploma in art from Santiniketan, India, and a JD from Columbia Law School. She lives and works in Washington,

DC.

Autumn Spears is a DC native whose art serves as a powerful medium for reimagining Black histories and diasporic narratives. Her upbringing within communities of color, alongside her experiences navigating predominantly white institutions, has deeply shaped both her identity and artistic vision. Moving between these contrasting spaces sparked her commitment to exploring Black representation and identity across the African diaspora.  In 2020, she received her BFA in Art Education from Albright College. In 2023, Spears held her inaugural solo exhibition, Becoming, at the Freedman Gallery in Reading, Pennsylvania. This milestone event showcased her distinctive style and marked the beginning of a promising artistic journey. Additionally, Spears’ work has been featured in local cultural institutions such as the MLK Memorial Library, Charles Sumner School, Anacostia Arts Center, and the Anacostia Community Museum. Spears is also a 2024 DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities grant recipient and 2025 Art Bank finalist.

About WPA

Founded in 1975, Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) is a nonprofit incubator and laboratory for artist-organized projects, headquartered in Dupont Circle, Washington, DC. Since its founding, WPA has presented more than 500 exhibitions; 1,000 performances; 700 lectures, workshops, and symposia; 250 screenings; and 58 public art projects. Over the past four decades, nearly every major visual artist in the District has been part of WPA’s programming. After renewing its mission in 2018, WPA has carved out a new identity with a national and international scope, uplifting values of collaboration, experimentation, and inclusivity in all of its programmatic and operational activities. Learn more at wpadc.org.