All posts by maraahmedstudio


The Homeland Dwells in Poetry


Online poetry readings & Gaza fundraiser featuring Palestinian poets Mosab Abu Toha, George Abraham, and Sara Abou Rashed. This fundraiser will support journalist Salem Ahmed’s initiative, on the ground in Gaza, which provides food to families. Please join us. Registration is needed.

Adirondacks Artist Retreat


This artist retreat at the Hewitt Lake Club was transformative. Not only the idea of creating art and art alone in a remote and absolutely stunning environment, but also the richness of being surrounded by artists working in multiple media/ disciplines/ contexts and witnessing their praxis up close.

Screenings in Pakistan


Three screenings of Return to Sender along with artist talks/PowerPoint presentations in three different community spaces in Islamabad and Lahore

Rochester Museum & Science Center | Changemakers Interactive Map


Excited that RMSC has created a map documenting their historic exhibition, Changemakers: Rochester Women Who Changed the World (in which I had the honor of being featured). This interactive map is now available as a digital interactive at RMSC on the second floor, Patricia Hale Gallery, but you can also access it online.

Visual Studies Workshop Salon: In Dialogue with Mara Ahmed


I will be coming to Rochester, NY, on March 28th to present a dialogue between my work on colonial postcards and the Visual Studies Workshop’s film and lantern slide archives. This will be an exciting conversation where we will see clips from my new film, about the aftershocks of colonialism, juxtaposed against film clips from Rochester in the 1970s that talk about police control and violence.

MLK Day: I have a dream for liberation from the Congo to Palestine


Dr. King called on the US to undergo a radical revolution of values. He believed that Jim Crow segregation and the war in Vietnam were rooted in the same ethic of race-based domination. By 1967, Dr King’s religious vision for nonviolence went beyond street protests, to include abolishing what he called the “triple evils” threatening American society. He defined them as racism, poverty, and militarism.

The Warp & Weft Palestine


Today we launch the next phase of this project. In the midst of the gruesome genocide we are witnessing in Gaza, people from around the world are welcome to join us in reading, holding up, and sharing the voices and stories of Palestinian writers and poets. This is an open archive, so contact us if you would like to contribute a reading. Pls follow us on Instagram and listen to powerful poetry and stories from Palestine: @WarpAndWeftArchive

Warp and Weft by Shadab Zeest Hashmi


How we met in the lilt and nectary of the typed word
How air wove itself into spring around our screens and snapped time-
tables, and turned us from panic to song, spinning the counterfeit
back into gold, handing us to each other a filament at a time…

Return to Sender at Southampton Arts Center


Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation will be screened at Southampton Arts Center on Sunday November 19, 2:00 – 4:00 pm. The screening will be followed by a panel discussion with Jeremy Dennis, Minerva Perez, and Brenda Simmons. This event is free and open to the public but registration is needed.

Return to Sender: Exhibition Catalog


Return to Sender is an art exhibition inspired by Mara Ahmed’s film of the same title, with Fatimah Arshad, Urvashi Bhattacharya and Sumayia Islam. The Exhibition Catalog by Mara Ahmed, Avina Mathias and Emelyn Pareja-Garcia aims to provide more historical context for the film and exhibition. It hopes to excavate layers of colonial history, gender relations, and power dynamics in order to deconstruct the male gaze (a concept rooted in the objectification and sexualization of women), and to clarify its intersection with colonialism and imperialism. Huntington’s History & Decorative Arts Museum, Huntington, New York, Fall 2023