SWIMMING:  Art and Poetry Workshop for Public Art Project

SWIMMING: Art and Poetry Workshop for Public Art Project

Join us for a healing art and poetry workshop to co-create a new public art project by Storytelling with Saris

By Monica Jahan Bose/Storytelling with Saris

Date and time

Wednesday, May 8 · 4 - 6pm EDT

Location

555 12th St NW

555 12th Street Northwest Washington, DC 20004

About this event

  • 2 hours

Please join us for an an art and poetry workshop to cocreate work for SWIMMING, a new public art project that explores the deep and essential connections we have to water as our world faces increased flooding and rising sea levels due to climate change. Our host is Moms Clean Air Force. In honor of Mental Health Month, we will be focusing on healing, poetry, and hands on art to increase mindfulness, reduce climate anxiety, and improve mental health. When installed in June 2024 at the Marie Reed Community & Aquatic Center in Washington DC, SWIMMING will feature a “pool” of art-embellished saris, along with a sound walk, performances, film screenings, and poetry readings. Artist and climate activist Monica Jahan Bose will discuss the project and then lead a poetry and art workshop where we will create poetry and art on saris inspired by the healing properties of water and swimming and inequities in access. SWIMMING is part of Bose’s art and advocacy project Storytelling with Saris. Started over a decade ago, the project has fostered collaboration with women from Bose’s ancestral island in Bangladesh as well as residents of DC and people around the world.

To learn more and become part of this exciting project, please register and add to your calendar. Chidren are welcome to join with adults.

Please email storytellingwithsaris@gmail.com with any questions or accommodation needs.

Curator: Sarah Tanguy. Film/livestream: Paris Preston Music & Sound Design: Sonia Herrero.

Community partners: Marie Reed Elementary School and Community & Aquatic Center, Adams Morgan Partnership BID, DC Arts Center, Calvary Women's Services, Moms Clean Air Force.

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

Organized by

Storytelling with Saris is a collaborative art , advocacy and climate justice project. It uses woodblock prints on 18-foot-long saris, writing, oral history, performance, installation, and film to empower communities in North America and Europe to address climate change in solidarity with the women of Katakhali Village, an island community in Bangladesh on the frontlines of this crisis. Artist and activist Monica Jahan Bose, whose maternal roots are in Katakhali, collaborates with 12 women from Katakhali who have recently acquired literacy and climate adaptation skills and are valiantly fighting climate change. Through performance art, film, books, exhibitions, and advocacy workshops in Bangladesh, North America, and Europe, communities are inspired to take action in solidarity with our planet.

The project commenced in 2012 with a public talk and discussion at the 39th Street Gallery in Maryland, conversations via mobile phone with women in Katakhali, and research and planning in the US and Bangladesh. In January 2013, Monica went to the island to start work with the Katakhali women. The project continues with further writing in journals, sari printing, performances using the saris, events around the world. It includes research and community education on climate change and adaptation, and continued advocacy for and documentation of this community.

Katakhali Village and other islands and low lying areas may well disappear unless urgent global action is taken. Funded in part by the D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Website:  Storytelling with Saris Twitter @saristory Instagram: @mjbose @storywithsari