May 14 and July 16, 2016

The bilingual AddaArt project (Adda + Art) engaged women and girls in storytelling and artmaking. Led by Monica Jahan Bose, who is known internationally for her Storytelling with Saris work, AddaArt began with a workshop where Jahan Bose showed clips of her film and explained the importance of documenting oral histories. The inter-generational group of women then shared their stories and created art, painting on saris to record their narratives. Two of the participants, Nazmun Naher and Ansar Bahar Begum took the saris home and created kathas (quilts) from them.



For the public event, the women gathered at the Ave C plaza to showcase the kathas, tell their stories, and document them using the Story Corp application. The event began with a performance by BIPA. The concept of this event was for South Asian women to hold private conversations in public space, to reclaim the public sphere, which is often male dominated. Due to rain, we had to start inside, but moved to the plaza with a parade. The event was videoed and the kathas have traveled to Paris as well as exhibited on the Ave C plaza.