A Cultural Majlis: The Aesthetics of Solidarity/Fabulation
How can visual art disrupt constraints of representation, and offer sets of techniques for solidarity and fabulating the future? How do diasporic artists from West Asia and North Africa draw from their personal and cultural histories, iconography and practices to create something new altogether?
Drawing inspiration from traditional gathering spaces in the Middle East and North Africa where people exchange news and socialize, A Cultural Majlis: The Aesthetics of Solidarity/Fabulation seeks to explore the intersecting practices of artists who use their work to write against the archive, awaken alternative histories and exceed representation. Organized by arts administrator, independent curator and arts researcher Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah, the program will include an introductory lecture from Haley Renee, a moderated panel featuring Ebtisam Abdulziz, Hannah Atallah and Jackie Milad, a performance by Ebtisam Abdulaziz, an audience talk-back, and more. Guests will be invited to sit with the guest speakers on a majlis created by artist Hannah Atallah.
Join us for an afternoon of dialogue, reflection, and exploration of new narratives and artistic territories. Please note registration is required due to limited seating capacity.
This program was selected from Hamiltonian Artists open call, which invites artists, organizers, and cultural workers to present professional presentations in our U Street gallery space.
About the Speakers
Ebtisam Abdulaziz is a multidisciplinary artist and writer. She explores issues of identity and culture through installation, performance, mixed-media, painting and works on paper. Combining the scientific with the arbitrary, Abdulaziz draws from her training in science and mathematics.
Hannah Atallah is a Palestinian-Lebanese-Irish American interdisciplinary visual artist. With a focus on large-scale public art projects and installations, she prioritizes the incorporation of community and relevant cultural histories in her practice.
Jackie Milad is a U.S.- based artist whose mixed-media abstract paintings and collages address the history and complexities of dispersed cultural heritage and multi-ethnic identity. She has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally.
Haley Renee is an artist and educator with a background in contemporary art and Middle Eastern history. Their focus is on the material and psychological realities of living under American imperialism and Israeli settler colonialism.
About the Organizer
Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah is a Palestinian-American arts administrator, independent curator and researcher whose work spans museums, non-profit spaces, public art and cultural diplomacy. She is interested in the alternative histories, new visual languages, practices of fabulation and contributions of modern and contemporary diasporic artists from West Asia and North Africa and other diasporic communities from the global majority to the cultural fabric of Washington, D.C. and the broader art historical canon.
She has curated and co-curated several exhibitions featuring West Asia and North Africa and its diaspora including More Than Your Eyes Can See: Contemporary Photography of the Arab World (2022), Perfume in Exile (2025) and the forthcoming exhibitions Arab Pop Art: Between East and West and Multitudes: Arab Women Artists/DC. Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, Canvas Magazine, the National News and will be included in the forthcoming anthology, A Decolonial Guide to Palestine published by Duke University Press.
