It’s the one year anniversary of our first Islam & Print cohort show, What Happens When We Nurture, and we’ve made a lot of changes to this fellowship since then! We learned so much from the first iteration and graciously thank our first four fellows for joining us for the ride.
Islam & Print grew out of a desire to share the accessibility of printmaking as an arts medium. One of the first conversations Dan and I had was him casually pitching to me, a youth arts educator, the idea to host screen printing workshops for young Muslim kids in Baltimore out of a garage. I laughed but encouraged the thought. Dan toyed with the idea over the following year, but I denied any involvement as I had already been in collaborative projects and needed some down time. The final impetus to create Islam & Print was advice from visual artist Faisal Abdu’allah who told Dan, you can’t wait for some perfect moment or a large grant to start. Eventually, I agreed to help in any way that I could support my soon-to-be husband in his passion project. And over time, as we received applications, met our fellows, and began developing this community, I became as invested as Dan in the vision of Islam & Print.
It was a no brainer to get behind honestly. I might even consider it a part of my life’s work. The mission of Islam & Print is to champion diverse Muslim experiences and strengthen career readiness by building a network of regional emerging visual artists of all mediums through our bi-annual fellowship. Who wouldn’t get behind that? We do this by providing bi-weekly brainstorming sessions, writer and curator critiques, alumni visits and critiques, hands-on experience in screen printing, and a culminating group exhibition.
So what does that look like exactly?
So far this year, our 2024 cohort of Hoor Imad Sherpao, Madyha Leghari, and Mina Sarfaraz have
- Met as a group 11 times (5 of those in person)
- Met for individual one-on-one meetings 4 times
- Met with 3 curators including Joy Davis, Anisa Olufemi, and Teri Henderson
- Met with 2 I&P alumni including Suldano Abdiruhman and Tayyab Maqsood
- Hosted 125+ visitors during our Bromo Artwalk pop-up exhibition