Art is Not Optional

 

Art is Not Optional    January 25-February 28, 2020     Gallery Al Quds

Artists

Adam Chamy

Adnan Charara

Ahmad AlKarkhi

Ammanda Seelye Salzman

Amr Mounib

Amy Joseph

Andrew Courtney

Andrew Ellis Johnson

Annemarie Feld

Bud Hensgen

Corinne Whitlatch

Dagmar Painter

Daniel Sonnentag

Dina Charara

Doris Bittar

Fouad Foty

Hani Hourani

Helen Zughaib

John Halaka

Karam Mishalani

Katie Archibald-Woodward

Katie Klassman

Kim Jensen

Lena Seikaly

Lori Katz

Louise Gish Dubinsky

Lukman Ahmad

Manal Deeb

Mary Tuma

Meriem Elatra

Michael Keating

Michelle Amateau Amato

Mohamed Musallem

Mohammad Sabaaneh

Molly McCartney

Mona El-Bayoumi

Mouchid Kheir

Najat El-Khairy

Najib Joe Hakim

Najwa Al-Amin

Nawaf Soliman

Nida Khalil

Phoebe Farris

Qais Al-Sindy

Rajie Cook

Rehma Mohamed

Samar Hussaini

Sarra Hennigen

Shakir Alousi

Shaun Rabah

Susanne Slavick

Tory Cowles

Vian Shamounki Borchert

Yasmine Dabbous

Zahi Khamis

Zeina Azzam

Zohra Ben Hamida

 

About the Artists

Adam Chamy is a Palestinian-American artist, architectural designer and writer living and dreaming in Washington, DC. 

Adnan Charara is a Lebanese American multimedia artist who has lived and worked in the U.S. since 1982.His artwork is famous for his whimsical and humorous treatment of serious subjects. In 2011 Adnan bought the historic Astro building in Detroit as part of his commitment to community development, turning it into a studio, gallery and space for disadvantaged youth to work with art. Adnan was featured on the PBS series Arab-American Stories in 2012.

Ahmad Alkarkhi, a member of the Iraqi Artists Syndicate, and winner of the Urquhart Award, has exhibited internationally and across the U.S.

Ammanda Seelye Salzman was born in Amman, Jordan and grew up between the Middle East and the United States, an experience that informed her worldview as well as her artistic subject matter. She has shown at the Abu Dhabi International Art Fair several times as well as in Kuwait, New York, London and at Miami Art Basel.

Amr Mounib’s film lineage goes back to his grandfather, Fawzi Mounib, who produced Egypt’s first silent movies, and his grandmother, Mary Mounib, an actress. His father was a television producer, who also painted and took photographs. Amr’s professional photography career includes fashion and art photography and human rights work.

Amy Joseph is an artist based in Arlington, Virginia. She works in photography, multimedia and screen printing.

Andrew Courtney states “My work as an artist, teacher and activist for social change has taken place in many countries and cultures. I seek photographic work that represents and depicts a threshold view. This derives from my need to move within cultures, countries and occupied territories where ordinary people are trying to live their lives amid societal upheaval. It’s their thresholds and mine as an advocacy artist. My aim is to have you share my experiences. It’s the sounds, smells, textures and conversational moments around ordinary people greeting us at their thresholds.”

Andrew Ellis Johnson treats representation as a way to combat torpor. His work has addressed the Haitian grassroots movement; homelessness; predatory economics; hemispheric hegemonies; unabated sowing of land mines; crises in the Middle East; cultural eclipses; the visibility and invisibility of communication; consequences of war and violence; meditations on labor and myth; and the current immigration and refugee crises.

Annemarie Feld states “While I grew up in Switzerland, colors, textures, shapes and unusual objects always interested me and were and still are an important part of my life. After moving to the USA, I worked as a graphic designer for many years, working on a wide range of projects including exhibits and package design. My interest in three-dimensional design soon evolved and expanded to wearable art where I often combine unexpected elements into my pieces. Art is part of my life and is “the massage for my soul.”

Bud Hensgen is an Arlington based painter who began painting Plein air landscapes and eventually moved to more abstract oil and acrylic paintings.  He was a long-time member of the Arlington Artists Alliance but has recently retired from that group.

Corinne Whitlatch states “My artwork reflects images and narratives drawn from my 30 years of employment related to the Middle East.  I am inspired by the shards and artifacts gathered on my travels across the region – from Morocco east to Iran and Turkey.   I join found objects, ceramics, pressed plants, minerals and mosaics with glass and hammered and pierced brass.  My designs are influenced by the study of Islamic ornamentation and of Middle Eastern cultures, symbols, history and political struggles.”  She is a member of the National Capital Art Glass Guild, an organization of Washington metro glass artists and artisans, and The James Renwick Alliance, an independent national nonprofit.

Dagmar Painter is an independent curator and sometime mixed-media artist.  Aside from her 100 shows for Gallery Al-Quds, she was Gallery Director at Gallery Patina in Washington DC, and the Gallery of the Embassy of Tunisia in Washington DC. She has curated exhibitions in Paris and London, lectured and worked in the arts in Asia and the Middle East.

Daniel Sonnentag was born in West Berlin in 1982. He grew up in one of Berlin’s neighborhoods with the highest population of migrants, mostly from Turkey and several Arab countries.  At age 17, he began working as a photo assistant, and then briefly attended the photography school “Fotografie am Schiffbauer Damm.”  His career as a photographer and videographer began in 2007, primarily shooting commercials for big brand companies, as well as actor portraits. In 2015, Sonnentag began volunteering at the ICC Berlin refugee camp, where he first met the subjects of his recent photography. Since his initial encounters with the children there, he has become a regular force in the camp, accompanying the kids on excursions, teaching kickboxing, and providing a strong “fatherly” figure for many. These experiences influenced his decision to focus his photographic work on the social issues of integration of immigrants and the communication between people of different cultural and religious backgrounds.

Dina Charara is a visual artist whose work has been exhibited in the US, Canada and Lebanon. Her themes often include the struggle of the Middle Eastern woman and her position in society.

Doris Bittar is a visual artist on the Faculty, California State University San Marcos School of Art-SofA. She is also President, San Diego Chapter, American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee-ADC and Coordinator, Teach & Learn Literacy – TaLL.

Fuad Foty is an oud instrumentalist and a vibrant vocalist with over thirty years of performance and musical instruction experience.  Born in Ramallah, Palestine, an integral part of Fuad’s childhood involved learning the classical Arabic songs of the musicians and composers of the time.  But it wasn’t until Fuad left Ramallah in 1974 and arrived in Houston, Texas that he reconnected with his memories of his homeland by teaching himself how to play the oud at age fifteen.  His passion for the oud quickly evolved and he joined various Arab bands and started playing music to inform the American public about Palestine and the Palestinian cause.  He is Co-Director of Music Performance & Instruction, Foty Fusion Productions.

 

Hani Hourani is a Jordanian photographer and painter, since the 1960s.  Since 1996 he held 16 solo exhibitions including the Gutenberg Museum (Sweden), USA, Aleppo, Cairo (Egypt) and Doha (Qatar) in addition to Amman, Petra and AlSalt city, and the 11th International Cairo Biennale in Cairo. His works were also exhibited in Al Manamah Museum (Bahrain), Al Sharjah Museum (UAE) and collected by the National Fine Art Museum in Amman- Jordan. His work can be found in Le Royal Hotel Amman, Crown Plaza – Dead Sea and Movenpick Aqaba. He is also a researcher on Jordanian politics and social history and founder and director-general of the Al-Urdun al-Jadid Research Center in Amman.

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon, coming to the United States to study art at Syracuse University, earning her BFA from the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Helen currently lives in Washington, DC, and works fulltime as an artist. She paints primarily in gouache and ink on board and canvas. More recently, she has worked with wood, shoes and cloth and mixed media installations. Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Lebanon. Her paintings are included in many private and public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, US Consulate General, Vancouver, Canada, American Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, the Arab American National Museum in Michigan, and the DC Art Bank collection.  In 2008, Helen was invited as US Cultural Envoy through the US Department of State, to Palestine, where she led a month- long workshop with Palestinian women artists from the West Bank. In 2009, she was invited to Switzerland and France, under the US Department of State’s Speaker and Specialist Program, sharing her work with universities and schools. In October 2016, she traveled to Saudi Arabia as US Cultural Envoy, speaking to young Saudi women artists and exhibiting her work at the Quincy House in Riyadh. Her paintings have been gifted to heads of state by President Obama and former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

John Halaka is a Visual Artist working in the fields of Painting, Drawing, Photography, Documentary Filmmaking and Oral History. His artwork investigates personal, social and political conditions of instability caused by physical and psychological dislocation. John Halaka received his MFA in Visual Arts from the University of Houston on 1983.  He was awarded a B.A. in Painting and Drawing from Brooklyn College in 1979.

A selection of Halaka’s paintings, drawings and photographs can be viewed on his art web site: www.johnhalaka.com . Information about his film projects and oral history archives can be found on his film web site: www.sittingcrowproductions.com.

Karam Mishalani states “Photography has been an art medium that I enjoy. And through which I have learned a lot about people, the world I live in and myself. I am a stone mason by trade. When I am not working, I enjoy spending time with my family hiking and meditating on nature with a camera.”

Katie Archibald-Woodward is a spiritual director, artist, and travel guide based in Atlanta, endeavoring to nurture compassion and work for equality, dignity, and freedom for us all.

Katy Klassman started mixing pigments at a young age for her grandmother who was a china painter. She studied History of Art and Fine Art at Skidmore College and continues to study pigment making to create materials for her work. “I paint with handmade mineral watercolors to create small fantastical landscapes that speak to the myriad of colors that come from the earth and in honor of the alchemical tradition.”

Kim Jensen is an associate professor of English at the Community College of Baltimore County.  She puts her profession to practice as the author of The Woman I Left Behind, and the collection of poems, Bread Alone.  Her writing and poetry have been featured in a spread of anthologies and journals, including The Baltimore Review, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, Rain Taxi Review, Al Jadid, and Imagine Peace.  Jensen’s book The Only Thing That Matters, is another powerful collection of poems derived from the ideas and vocabulary of radical poet and novelist Fanny Howe and transformed into astonishing new formulations.

Lena Seikaly painted the beautiful drawing to accompany a poem by her mother, the poet Zeina Azzam. In her other life,  she has been named “one of Washington’s preeminent jazz singers” and “brightest voices in jazz” (The Washington Post), as well as a “major league young talent in jazz” (Duke Ellington’s biographer, Dr. John Hasse), She was one of eleven semi-finalists for the prestigious 2015 Thelonious Monk Institute International Jazz Vocals Competition in L.A., and is an alum of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead program in DC, and the Strathmore Artist-in-Residence program in Maryland. As the leader of her own trio, quartet and quintet, Lena has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Blues Alley, the Hamilton, Strathmore Music Center and Mansion and Sidney Harman Hall, to name a few. She has headlined numerous jazz festivals and has been a featured vocalist with many jazz orchestras, including the Smithsonian Jazz Masterworks Orchestra.  Lena has released four albums.  A proud Palestinian American, Lena has also been involved in many Arabic fusion projects both in the U.S. and abroad — in summer of 2015, she toured in Palestine and Israel as the featured vocalist with Al-Manara, a European-Palestinian ensemble performing original music based on the life of its Palestinian composer and founder, Ramzi Aburedwan.

Lori Katz is a studio artist in the Washington DC area. Lori works primarily in clay with occasional and increasingly frequent forays outside that medium.

Louise Gish Dubinsky worked as a designer and graphic artist, most recently at National Geographic. She specializes in small sculptural constructions using found objects.

Lukman Ahmad is a Kurdish artist who fled Syria, sought asylum in Turkey in 2010, and eventually moved to the U.S. where he is now an American citizen. He states “Artists are a filter. You get water, and you put it through a filter, and it becomes pure. An artist is a filter of stories and of life. A lot of people cannot express themselves—they do not have the ability to say what is happening to them, so they stay silent. Artists can tell that story—and through their imagination, they can create something unique and deliver it to the people. Art should be the voice of people. Maybe if I was born in America or Europe, my views would be different. But because I was born in Kurdistan, I will never, ever give up. I promise my myself, I promise to the mountains of Kurdistan, I promise to the people of Kurdistan, I will do the best for them. I will keep going.”

Manal Deeb is a Palestinian-American artist who was born in Ramallah, Palestine,             and currently resides in Fairfax, VA. Manal studied Studio Arts at the University of Illinois  in Chicago, and got her Bachelor degree in Interdisciplinary Studies with concentration  in Psychology of Art from George Mason University in Virginia. Manal has had solo and group exhibits in cities across the United States, including New York, Chicago, Washington, DC, Richmond, Dallas, Spokane, Denver, Boston, Santa Fe, and Los Angeles. Her work has also been exhibited internationally in Paris, Rome, and Cairo; London and Brighton, England; Delhi, India; Doha, Qatar; Amman, Jordan; Islamabad, Pakistan; and Malaga, Spain. Ramallah, Palestine and recently at Banksy’s Walled-Of Hotel in Bethlehem.

Mary Tuma is an artist of Palestinian and Irish descent who works in the medium of fibers. Her work explores issues of identity dealing with the body, feminism, spirituality and Palestine.

Meriem Elatra is an Algerian-American Paris based artist, born in Houston and raised in Algiers.

Michael Keating is a longtime photographer and editor of The VVA Veteran, the magazine of Vietnam Veterans of America.

Micaela Amateau Amato is in the collections of The Museum of Art & Design/NYC, SFMOMA, Denver Art Museum, List Collection NYC, Rockefeller Collection NYC, National Liberty Museum, and her work has been reviewed in the NYTIMES, LA Times, Artforum International, Art in America, etc. She is Professor Emerita from Pennsylvania State University. “All forms of oppression and all forms of emancipation are equally connected: ethnic, racial, gender, economic equality, and environmental accountability are all intimately interconnected.”

Mohammed Musallam was born in Gaza in 1974 after his family had been dislocated from historic Palestine as a consequence of the 1948 war. He holds a BA in Painting from Al Najah University and an MA in Painting from Helwan University, Cairo. He currently resides in Gaza and works there as a lecturer of “Painting and the History of Palestinian Arts” at the College of Arts, Al Aqsa University. He was honored with the prestigious Artist-in-Residence: Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. He has also worked as an artist in Canada. Musallam uses various painting tools, materials and a range of different colors to convey different levels of the strength of expression. Papers, newspapers and pieces of clothes are often used in his works. He also finds expression in installations and video art works.

Mohammad Sabaaneh is a Palestinian cartoonist. He works at the Palestinian newspaper, Al-Haya Al-Jadeda. Sabaaneh is a member at the International Cartoon Movement. He won many graphic awards and took third at the Arabic Caricature Contest in 2013. He published in Arabic newspapers such as Al-Etehad, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, Al-Ghad Al-Ordoni and Al-Akhbar Al-Lubnanieh. Sabaaneh exhibited in Britain, Spain and Washington and participated in international fairs in Berlin, Norway, Holland, Genève, Qatar and Syria. Sabaaneh gave lectures about the art of caricature at Al-Najah National University, The Arab American University, Kitso University at Basque County in Spain, Atlantic College in Britain and The New School and Visual Art School University in New York. He participated in many international publications such as The truth has more than one face in Europe and Sketch of Freedom in the US. that more than 100 international artists participated in. Freedom House chose one of his works in 2016 as one of the year’s most important photos. His first book was published in the US in April 2017.

Molly Sinclair McCartney is a writer and photographer. She was a newspaper reporter for more than 30 years, including 14 years at the Washington Post. Co-author with James McCartney of “America’s War Machine: Vested Interests, Endless Conflicts.”

Mona El-Bayoumi is a prominent Egyptian-American artist. Her work has been featured in galleries and institutions both in the United States as well as internationally, notably in Cairo, Paris and Johannesburg. Her work has elicited extensive interest worldwide due to her artistic reflections on pertinent world events. She is also Director of Fine Arts at Foty Fusion Productions.

Mouchid Kheir was born in 1949 and grew up in Tripoli, Lebanon. He was educated at ENSAD, Ecole Nationale Superieure des Arts Decoratifs, Paris. For his work in portraiture he trained under the master Daniel Greene. Painting in oils in both abstract and traditional styles, he works out of his studio in Beirut.

Najat El-Khairy is a Palestinian porcelain painter, researcher, curator and lecturer on Palestinian Heritage and culture. She lives in Canada.  Her piece in this exhibition is one part of a collection of 5 artworks that represent the voice of the people of Palestine. It speaks for their aspirations and demands with 5 letters to assert their rights to and on their land. L for Liberty; V for Victory; R for Right of Return; E for Equality; P for Peace in Palestine. All 5 pieces are on the website www.najat.ca

Najib Joe Hakim works as a freelance photographer and photojournalist in San Francisco. His work has been published in numerous national and regional magazines and newspapers. He has exhibited his personal work in galleries on both coasts and internationally. Najib Joe Hakim works as a documentary and editorial photographer. He is a Political Art Fellow at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the recipient of the 2020 Rebuilding Alliance Storytellers Award for his Home Away from Home: Little Palestine by the Bay project and also a nominee for the US Artist Fellowship. He received grants from the SF Arts Commission Cultural Equity Grant and the Arab Fund for Arts & Culture for Home Away from Home – a multi-media storytelling exhibition juxtaposing recorded oral histories of 26 Bay Area Palestinian-Americans with their B&W portraits. He has been honored with numerous other awards including most recently 1st Place in a global competition sponsored by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, Best Photo Essay from the CA Newspaper Publishers Assoc.; and 1st Prize in the Luminance Exhibition (NYC).

Najwa-Al Amin was born in Baghdad, Iraq. She now lives & works in Baltimore County, MD. “I believe that nature and music are the ultimate forms of Art, they inspire me, and what I paint is a personal interpretation of the effect of nature, people, music on me.”

Nawaf Soliman is a creative innovator, businessman, designer, calligrapher, and artist.  After a colorful thirty-five years of educational and career commitments in the fields of advertising, communication and design in both the Middle East and worldwide, Nawaf settled in the Washington, DC area with his own business venture, ObjectDC. Nawaf has developed a unique style of calligraphy based on the sophisticated, traditional scripts of the Arabic language. He has been commissioned by various organizations and collectors to create elaborate calligraphy art projects that demonstrate the beauty and depth of the traditional Arabic calligraphy craft.

Nida Khalil is a mosaic artist whose participation in our exhibition Forbidden Colors, brought back memories of her childhood in Palestine. Her sculpture for this exhibition is made on an Italian rooftop tile (literally from Italy, made in Italy), completely with Italian Smalti gold and glass. She mosaiced an Italian sunset onto it, while she was in Italy. 

Phoebe Farris is an independent curator, arts editor for Cultural Survival Quarterly, free-lance writer for the National Museum of the American Indian magazine, photographer, professor emerita, and registered art therapist, Phoebe explores issues involving race, gender, indigenous sovereignty, Native American studies, the environment, peace and social justice from multiple perspectives. Her documentary photography focuses on contemporary Native American culture and peoples, primarily from the east coast who are often neglected in the mainstream representation of Indian country, as well as the lands, skies, and waters we inhabit and serve as caretakers.

Qais Al Sindy is an Iraqi contemporary artist and painter currently residing in California. In 2000, he received a BA, Academy of Fine Arts, and in 2004 an MFA from Baghdad University. Qais left Iraq in 2004 because of restrictions on his work. He lived temporarily in Jordan, before moving to the US in 2008.  His paintings have been shown in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, based on themes of exile and fundamental humanity. Qais has also produced an 11-minute documentary about the burning of the Iraqi library called “Letters Don’t Burn.”

Rajie Cook is an internationally known graphic designer, photographer and artist. He has been the President of Cook and Shanosky Associates, Inc., a graphic design firm he founded in 1967. His graphic design and photography have been used by IBM, Container Corporation of America, Montgomery Ward, Squibb Corporation, Black & Decker, Volvo, Subaru, AT&T, New York Times, Bell Atlantic, BASF, Lenox, and a number of other major international corporations. He received the Presidential Award for Design Excellence from President Reagan and Elizabeth Dole on January 30,1984. In 2003, “Symbols Signs” a project designed by his firm for the US Department of Transportation was accepted by the Acquisitions Committee to the collections of Cooper Hewitt, National Design Museum, and The Smithsonian Institution. Many of the “Boxes” that he has created in his artistic practice are an expression of the artist’s deeply felt concern for human rights and for the tragic conditions in the Middle East. They were created to articulate the circumstances and experiences he encountered during the ten years he has served on the Task Force for the Middle East, a group sponsored by the Presbyterian Church, USA. With this group he has traveled on fact-finding trips to Israel, Jordan, the West Bank, and Gaza He recently published A Vision for My Father: The Life and Work of Palestinian-American Artist and Designer Rajie Cook.

Rehma Mohamed is a Palestinian-American digital artist who lives in Dallas, Texas. For this exhibition, she has abandoned her computer and taken up her needle.

Samar Hussaini is an Arab American, Fine Artist, and Graphic Designer working, creating, and living outside of NYC in West Orange, NJ. After receiving a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Maryland, with a double major in Studio Art and Art History, Hussaini started her career with an art residency and solo exhibit at Darat El Fanun in Amman, Jordan, in 1993. Soon after she moved to NYC to get her Master’s in Communication Design from Pratt Institute, Hussaini worked in advertising, winning multiple awards. Her fine artwork has been exhibited in several group shows around New Jersey, New York, and Washington, DC.  She was chosen as the Maplewood Ideas Festival featured artist in 2017, received a certificate of recognition from the Brooklyn Waterfront Artists Coalition in 2018, was honored with an Innovative Fine Art Award from the Catherine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club in 2019, and most recently awarded honorable mention at the 2019 NJ Maplewood Art Walk. Born in the United States to Arab parents Samar Hussaini seeks to visualize the layered challenges and enriching distinction of being a Palestinian-American and at the same time striving to create thought-provoking ideas of dialogue and hope. Hussaini’s work incorporates layers of symbols and cultural icons connected to her Palestinian heritage. Icons such as the traditional Thob, a Palestinian dress which is notable for its embroidered designs, indicating regional identity and the practice associated with women’s self-expression in their community. Inspired by her father, the late Hatem Hussaini, a political activist and leader who spoke about creating empathy and humanizing Palestinians, she employs his writings from over 30 years ago which still have context and resonate even today. Mixed media elements such as charcoal, graphite, metal leaf, stitching, and acrylic paint on canvas, reveal a personal narrative luring the viewer in to uncover the depths of an intricate and multi-challenged story. Hussaini’s works isolate movement and emotions — vitalizing new sequences and illuminating an inseparable relationship between layers.

Sarra Hennigan works with unusual media to create delicate paper mementos she calls cartography of the memory.

Shakir Alousi, Iraqi painter born in Baghdad, in 1962. “Those were peaceful times,” he recalls, drawing on tales and images his parents and relatives shared with him while he was growing up. From the Baghdad of the 1950s and 1960s, Alousi’s women are prosperous-looking and curvaceous with well-defined kohled eyes. Alousi has stayed loyal to the Impressionist Baghdadi school of art style, “as a form of remembrance” and his works have been heavily influenced by Jawad Salim, a pioneer of the modern art movement in Iraq, who died prematurely at the age of 41. Having relocated to Amman and later the US, Alousi has had numerous exhibitions worldwide.

Shaun Rabah is a Jordanian American visual artist. Born in Valletta, Malta to an American mother and Palestinian commercial pilot father, he draws his inspiration from his multicultural routes and to the different traditions he has been exposed to as a child and during his travels. His paintings have found their way into respected galleries, interior designers and into Home & Design magazine. Shaun has auctioned works for select institutions and nonprofits such as Human Rights Foundation and the Edward Said Foundation. He currently operates out of Amman, Jordan and various countries including Spain and Romania as he continues to find inspiration in modern nomadic ways of living and artistic human healing modalities.

Susanne Slavick is an artist, curator and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University.  Her work strives for empathic unsettlement, examining what we stand to lose after what we have lost already and before we lose more.

Tory Cowles has a studio at the Torpedo Factory in Alexandria VA and is represented by Touchstone Gallery in Washington, DC.  After painting large colorful abstracts for many years, she is currently making sculptures and large interactive installations.  She likes to manipulate and combine raw, gritty materials with disparate, often elegant materials so that they transform each other.

Vian Shamounki Borchert is an award winning contemporary international artist who exhibits nationally and internationally in major world cities. The National Gallery of Fine Art in Amman, Jordan has her artwork in their permanent collection. Vian is a graduate and “Notable Alumni” from the Corcoran College of Art and Design George Washington University, Washington, D.C. Vian considers her expressionistic and abstracted art as visual poems.

Yasmine Dabbous, PhD, is an academic and artisan/artist from Beirut, Lebanon. Formerly an assistant professor of journalism and cultural studies at the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Dabbous left her position to study jewelry and textile design at the Fashion Institute of Technology. Dabbous conceives her work at the intersection of her multiple fields of expertise, fusing mediums and methodologies. She has participated in solo and collective art exhibitions in Beirut, Washington DC and New York City. Dabbous is the founder of Kinship Stories, a line of tribal art necklaces revolving around values, stories and craftsmanship.

Zahi Khamis was born and raised in the Palestinian village of Reineh outside of Nazareth.  Khamis emigrated to Europe and then to California in the early 80s. He earned his BA in Mathematics at San Diego State University, studied literature and philosophy at San Francisco State University, and earned his MA degree in Liberal Arts from Loyola University. Zahi has been painting and exhibiting for many years. His work has appeared in numerous publications and in solo, juried, and cultural exhibits, including shows at the United Nations, The U.S. Senate, The Palestine Center (Washington D.C) and the Carnegie Institute for Peace. Informed by the Palestinian story, and his own life in exile, Zahi’s work is part of the long tradition of committed art. His bright, optimistic colors combined with the tragic expressions of his subjects express the painful, yet luminous, contradictions of all those who struggle for liberation. Khamis is currently a professor of Arabic and the director of the Arabic Program at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland

Zeina Azzam is a Palestinian American poet, editor, and community activist. She works as a publications editor at Arab Center Washington DC. Previously, she served as executive director of The Jerusalem Fund. Azzam’s poems have appeared in a number of literary journals such as Pleiades, Cordite Poetry Review, Mizna, and Sukoon Magazine and in edited volumes including Bettering American Poetry, Making Mirrors: Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, and Gaza Unsilenced. Her chapbook, Bayna Bayna, In-Between, is forthcoming from Plan B Press. She holds an M.A. in Arabic literature from Georgetown University. 

Zohra Ben Hamida states “I am an Arab and Berber by ancestry, Tunisian by birth, Mediterranean and African by a lucky chance, American by destiny, and who I am today by choice.” Ben Hamida said she paints her striking images,  now abstract designs on mirrors,  using “the textures and colors that are memories of the domes of mosques” and the “blazing sun straddling the cool shades over the desert in Saudi Arabia,” where she lived as a youth. She also paints her memories of the bright garments worn by her Berber grandmother “with such pride,” and her Arab grandfather, “a man who could not see with his eyes, so instead saw farther and deeper with his heart, a man who, unbeknown to him, emitted a bright and subtle light each time he knelt in prayer.”