Date/Time
Date(s) - 08/02/2025
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Add This to Your Calendar

Location
Hamiltonian Artists

Categories

• Arab American
• Community
• culture
• Discussion

Cost:
Free (donation option) USD
Contact Person:

Email:
INFO@HAMILTONIANARTISTS.ORG
Website:
https://www.hamiltonianartists.org
Phone:
(202) 332-1116
Organization:
Hamiltonian Artists

WASHINGTON, DC

Explore the practices of artists who use their work to write against the archive, awaken alternative histories and exceed representation.

How can visual art disrupt constraints of representation, and offer sets of techniques for solidarity and fabulating the future? How do diasporic artists from West Asia and North Africa draw from their personal and cultural histories, iconography and practices to create something new altogether?

Drawing inspiration from traditional gathering spaces in the Middle East and North Africa where people exchange news and socialize, A Cultural Majlis: The Aesthetics of Solidarity/Fabulation seeks to explore the intersecting practices of artists who use their work to write against the archive, awaken alternative histories and exceed representation. Organized by arts administrator, independent curator and arts researcher Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, the program will include an introductory lecture from Haley Renee, poetry reading by Lenna Jawdat, a moderated panel featuring Ebtisam Abdulziz, Hannah Atallah and Jackie Milad, performance art by Ebtisam Abdulaziz, and an audience talk-back. Guests will be invited to sit with the guest speakers on a majlis created by artist Hannah Atallah.

Join us for an afternoon of dialogue, reflection, and exploration of new narratives and artistic territories. Please note registration is required due to limited seating capacity.

This program was selected from Hamiltonian Artists open call, which invites artists, organizers, and cultural workers to present professional presentations in our U Street gallery space.

About the Organizer

Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah is a Palestinian-American arts administrator, independent curator and researcher whose work spans museums, non-profit spaces, public art and cultural diplomacy. She is interested in the alternative histories, new visual languages, practices of fabulation and contributions of modern and contemporary diasporic artists from West Asia and North Africa and other diasporic communities from the global majority to the cultural fabric of Washington, D.C. and the broader art historical canon.

She has curated and co-curated several exhibitions featuring West Asia and North Africa and its diaspora including More Than Your Eyes Can See: Contemporary Photography of the Arab World(2022), Perfume in Exile (2025) and the forthcoming exhibitions Arab Pop Art: Between East and Westand Multitudes: Arab Women Artists/DC. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Canvas Magazine, the National News and will be included in the forthcoming anthology, A Decolonial Guide to Palestine published by Duke University Press.

GET TICKETS HERE