WHERE:Open Source Gallery
306 17th St
Brooklyn
NY 11215
Opening Reception/Iftar: May 22, 7-9pm
Artist Talk: May 3, 7-9pm
SAWCC co-presents Seven Minutes on the B67, a site-specific installation and social practice project by Monica Jahan Bose, presented by Open Source Gallery.
Monica Jahan Bose’s work explores ideas about climate change and community by linking together communities across international borders as well communities very near each other. Seven Minutes on the B67 focuses on Brooklyn, connecting Bangladeshi immigrants in the Kensington neighborhood with the residents living near Open Source Gallery in South Slope. Seven Minutes on the B67 is part of Bose’s ongoing Storytelling with Saris art and advocacy project. In this project, Bose uses the sari–eighteen feet of unstitched hand-woven cotton–to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet. Multilingual writing and text, especially by women, are emphasized as tools of empowerment and climate resilience.
Through her work, Bose underscores the importance of feeling connected as a community, both locally and globally, in addressing climate change. Bose creates collaborative saris using imagery and words about climate change with women from her ancestral community, Katakhali Village on Barobaishdia Island in Bangladesh, as well as with communities in the US and Europe. Through performances and art actions, participants learn climate mitigation and adaptation strategies, such as using public transportation, trying new farming techniques, and exchanging light bulbs and appliances with higher efficiency products. The saris are created by interweaving Bose’s woodblock designs with writing, drawing, and painting created by participants. While working on the saris, participants discuss climate change and, if they reside in wealthier carbon-producing communities, write pledges on the saris to reduce their carbon footprint. The climate pledge saris are ultimately returned to Bangladesh to be worn as garments by the women of Katakhali.
Seven Minutes on the B67 includes a sari workshop in Kensington with the Bangladeshi Ladies Club, a talk on May 3 at the gallery, a community iftar for the opening on May 22, and a closing climate art action on June 29.
For more visit: https://open-source-gallery.org/
About the artist
Monica Jahan Bose is a Bangladeshi-American artist and climate activist who has exhibited her work extensively in the US and internationally, including eighteen solo shows and numerous group exhibitions. Through over twenty performances and dozens of art actions, Bose has engaged thousands of people. Her ongoing feminist collaborative project, Storytelling with Saris, has traveled to ten states and several countries and been featured in numerous publications and TV and radio programs. Her work has appeared in the Miami Herald, the Washington Post, the Brooklyn Paper, Art Asia Pacific, the Milwaukee Sentinel, the Honolulu Star Advertiser, the Japan Times, and all major newspapers in Bangladesh. In 2019, she created a large-scale public art project called WRAPture in Washington, DC. She has a BA in the Practice of Art (Painting) from Wesleyan University, a post-graduate Diploma in Art from Santiniketan, India, and a JD from Columbia Law School.
This program is supported, in part, by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Joseph Robert Foundation, and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. Open Source Gallery programming is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. This project is presented in collaboration with Arts & Democracy. Special thanks to the Bangladesh Institute of Performing Arts, and the Bangladesh Ladies Club for their support and participation in this project.