UPCOMING EVENTS
An Afternoon Dedicated to Power / Play with Curator, Ambika Trasi, and Featured Artist, Noormah Jamal — May 11, 2024
On Saturday, May 11 at 4:30-6:30 PM at Twelve Gates Arts, 106 N 2nd St, join Twelve Gates Arts for an afternoon dedicated to the exhibition Power / Play! First, curator Ambika Trasi will give an overview of the works in the show and discuss the exhibition’s themes, which will be followed by a conversation with artist Noormah Jamal.
As part of this program, Twelve Gates is excited to screen Jagdeep Raina’s short animation, Fallout. Set in Southall—a working class immigrant enclave in the outskirts of London—Fallout explores the story of a woman's resilience as she heals from the trauma of abuse to nurture the unconditional bonds of love with her daughter.
Register for this event at Eventbrite: An Afternoon Dedicated to Power / Play
Community Conservation Clinic with Anisha Gupta — May 16, 2024
The objects we own carry meaningful and important stories, from a childhood blanket or favorite t-shirt, to a ticket from a memorable movie night or a family album. Or these objects are works of art, antiques, and collectibles.
We want to hear the stories your objects carry, and help you preserve them.
On Thursday, May 16th, 2024 at Twelve Gates Arts, 106 N 2nd St, we invite you to spend the evening with art conservators thinking about how to best preserve your object for the future. Bring in a meaningful item, share its story and how you care for it, and together we'll preserve these memories and objects. You'll also have the opportunity to pack up your items for safekeeping in materials traditionally used in museums. All materials will be provided. This is a family-friendly event, and multiple members of a family are encouraged to attend.
This event will be facilitated by Anisha Gupta, conservator, educator, and doctoral candidate at the University of Delaware.
Register for this event at Eventbrite: Community Conservation Clinic
SHEHREZAD MAHER: THE CURFEW LOOKBOOK — JUNE 4, 2024
In partnership with Collaborative Cataloging Japan and Japan America Society of Greater Philadelphia, Twelve Gates Arts will be presenting The Curfew Lookbook event by Shehrezad Maher on Tuesday, June 4, 2024, from 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM at Twelve Gates Arts, 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia, PA.
Join us for a discussion about the making process of Maher’s film, The Curfew, a narrative short script that won the Islamic Scholarship Fund’s National Film Grant and the Davey Foundation film grant. Maher will share her experiences in making narrative films and have a conversation about the storyboard, lookbook, mood board, short clips, stills, and BTS photos as well as host a screening of excerpts and segments from her previous films.
Born and raised in Karachi, Pakistan, Shehrezad Maher has screened her films at institutions and festivals such as Visions du Réel, RIDM, the LA Film Forum, Anthology Film Archives, UnionDocs, and Experiments in Cinema. She was awarded a 2023 Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage and won the 2023 Islamic Scholarship Fund’s National Film Grant for her narrative short script, “The Curfew.” Her feature film script, “Theory of Colors,” was one of the three projects selected for the 2023 HamptonsFilm Screenwriters Lab and received the Melissa Mathison Screenwriters Fund and the Cinestory Feature Retreat’s Hagan Hicks Underrepresented Women’s Voices Scholarship. Her work has been reviewed by publications such as Sight & Sound, Afterimage, POV Magazine, and Scroll, among others. She studied visual arts at Bennington College and earned an MFA from Yale University, where she was awarded the Blair Dickinson Memorial Prize.
ZAIN ALAM: I AM SOUNDING A SACRED SPACE — DATE TBD
I am sounding a sacred space is a sound performance by Zain Alam featuring recitations of the azaan (Islamic call to prayer) distilled into pure tone, as extension of and departure from Alvin Lucier’s I Am Sitting in a Room. With the participation of vocalists Nadine Murshid and Tanaïs, from varying traditions of melody (and ma'qam) across the Islamic world, the artist asks how sound can convey cultural knowledge despite the fixity of text and create sacred space in the process.
Zain Alam is an artist and musician of Indian-Pakistani origin based in Brooklyn, NY. Described as “a unique intersection, merging the cinematic formality of Bollywood and geometric repetition of Islamic art,” his recording project Humeysha began during his year working as an oral historian for the 1947 Partition Archive. His work is a project of translation using contemporary pop forms, found sound, and oral history as means of investigating one’s position in an outside tradition or community.
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