Highlights from Murals & Mimosas: A Celebration of Women Street Artists of Color

The ARTE Team thanks you all for your support of our 2017 fundraising celebration! Introducing our team who worked in planning and executing this event, from left to right: Tony, Marissa, Michaela, Abir, Paul, and Nelli.

Below are some key highlights from the event. We also included a postcard-writing action. To learn more about the action and how to participate, please visit this page. We also screened our mini-documentary featuring the story of one of our past ARTE participants and scholarship recipients, Gabriela. You can learn more about Gabriela's story and watch the video here.

Food was provided by different community folks and donations were received from Have-A-Bagel, Martha's Country Bakery, Sixpoint, and Trader Joe's. ARTE was honored to have two local community members, Farah Shaikh and Lili Salmeron cooking delicious homemade Pakistani and Salvadoran food for our brunch!

Featured art work at the event, included incredible pieces by Michaela Miragliotta, Lehna Huie, and Lady JDay. Information on their art pieces are below:

Lehna Huie is a multi-disciplinary artist, arts educator, curator, mother and cultural worker exercising a belief in the power of multi-vocal art. She is an artist amplifying stories of love, loss, and remembrance. Huie is deeply committed to the fusion of arts and social change as a path to liberation: exploring the past, present and the future of struggle and freedom. Central to Huie's creative work is her utilization of artistic expression as a compass for healing our world. Her work embodies cultural critique, celebration, and transformation. Lehna is an advocate for artists rights, reproductive justice and for survivors of domestic violence and often does design work and workshops for organizations and grassroots communities. Collaboration and community are key components in her life's work. You can learn more about her work at www.lehnahuie.com and on Instagram @untiltheriverdries and @lehnaoftheislands.

“I Be Your Water” is a large scale triptych that captures the physical presence, essence and the story of three distinctive women Nina Angela Mercer, dequi kioni sadiki and Chanel Porchia - who are committed to the global Black freedom struggle for survival in America. Each portrait measures at 8x5ft and are made using a collage method with acrylic paint, parachute cloth, fabric, canvas strips and felt. This project is part 1 of a 2 part project and is intended to be a traveling art piece. Part 2 is an experimental documentary titled " To Move Mountains" honoring the lives of these three women and their contributions set to be released in 2020.

The women featured in the above portraits are as follows:

Nina Angela Mercer is a cultural worker, artist, playwright, professor, advocate for survivors of domestic violence, advocate for reproductive justice, mother dedicated to the holistic liberation of Women of Color through theatre and poetry.

dequi kioni sadiki is a human rights advocate, artist, poet, feminist, advocate for political prisoners and their families, co-host/co-producer of the weekly public affairs show, Where We Live, on listener-sponsored WBAI-NY radio focusing on the issues of political/mass imprisonment, families and survivors of police terror and murder, repressive legislation, Puerto Rico and other grassroots organizing.

Chanel L. Porchia-Albert is the Founder and Executive Director of Ancient Song Doula Services. She is an activist, mother speaker, certified labor & postpartum doula, certified lactation counselor, midwifery assistant and student, vegan chef, and certified holistic health counselor specializing in high risk mothers, multiples, survivors of sexual trauma, VBAC's and DV, as well as a mother of four beautiful children. She is also the co-trainer for ASDS trainings. She has spoken at numerous colleges, conferences and continually rallied for women's issues.

Lady Jday is a committed artist who, through her painting and her performances in Street Art, contributes to the recognition of women and their multiple talents. Her colorful and lively work, with expressive features, testifies to her ability to feel and relay their emotions. Lady Jday follows in the footsteps of the Guerilla Girls, which promote the place of women and people of color in the arts as well as Street-Art artists. Young French artist, Lady Jday has already been exhibited several times in Paris, Los Angeles, New York, she has participated in international performances of Street Art in Paris, Dubai, London and San Francisco. She was awarded, in November 2015, the international competition #womenclimatejustice, awarded in New York in the framework of the COP 21. You can learn more about her work at www.ladyjday.com and on Instagram @ladyjday.

Michaela Miragliotta is an artist and educator; as ARTE's Curriculum Development Coordinator, has lent her extraordinary artistic talents to support the Global Women Heroes: Women Breaking Barriers project. You can follow her work on Instagram at @mica723.

The Global Women Heroes: Women Breaking Barriers is a public mural project that honors the legacy of global women’s rights heroes and asserts the voice and rights of incarcerated women. The mural was designed and imagined by a group of young women at the Rose M. Singer Center on Rikers Island who participated in a workshop with ARTE in the winter of 2016, in partnershp with Columbia University’s Justice-in-Education Initiative. Students learned about global women’s rights movements and practiced different art techniques to create portraits of these "Global Women Heroes" who have taken a stand for women’s rights. Together, they collaborated on designing a mural dedicated to the women’s rights activists and their legacy.

The mural will feature the portraits of the following Global Women Heroes: Michelle Obama, Leena Kejriwal, Dolores Huerta, Leymah Gbowee, Bree Newsome, and Malala Yousafzai. To keep updated on this project and receive updates, please visit the following page.

Thank you again to all of the individuals who supported ARTE this year, including our wonderful group of ARTE Ambassadors! To learn how you can be a 2018 ARTE Ambassador, please reach out directly to marissa(a)artejustice.org!