To have roots in West Asia and North Africa is to be able to draw from the infinite fountain of the region’s centuries-old histories and cultures. The group of artists brought together in this exhibition illustrates the varying degrees to which their roots, mixed heritages, lived experiences, and the sociopolitical, cultural, or diasporic conditions inform their worldviews. Although diverse in medium and subject matter, some overlapping themes emerged: the reconstitution of ancient heritage and practices; the body’s relationship to religious practices, the news, and the land; and responses to the most pressing issues of our time. In each work, the twelve artists offer a multitude of ways that they engage with their past, present, and future selves, the lineages and contemporary realities from which they draw.

Laila Abdul-Hadi Jadallah is an arts administrator, curator, and researcher whose international work has spanned working across museums, non-profit art spaces, public art, cultural diplomacy, and policy. She is interested in the alternative histories, new and decolonial visual languages, and practices of fabulation of modern and contemporary artists from West Asia and North Africa and their diasporas.

She has curated and co-curated exhibitions, including More Than Your Eyes Can See: Contemporary Photography of the Arab World (2022), Perfume in Exile (2025), and Arab Pop Art: Between East and West (2025).  Her curatorial work has been featured in the Washington Post, Canvas Magazine, and the National News. Her writing has been featured in CCAS Newsmagazine, OVER Journal, and will be included in the forthcoming anthology, A Decolonial Guide to Palestine, published by Duke University Press.

Aiyah Sibay is a Syrian-American poet, writer, and artist.

Her work honors the stories of Arab women and their position in the world. Using poetry, prose, textile, and audiovisuals, she delivers personal and political narratives that have been historically shamed and silenced. In her art, the Arab woman remains the central figure around which a range of themes are studied, questioned, and challenged.

Anysa Saleh was born and raised in the Central Valley of California. She is best known for her short videos and photographs, which document her experiences as a Yemeni Muslim woman in the United States. Saleh later moved to the Bay Area, where she attended California College of the Arts. She moved to the East Coast in 2016 and has exhibited in the United States and abroad.

Dina AZ. Salem, born in Alexandria, Egypt, is a Washington, DC–based abstract artist whose work explores themes of healing and emotional resilience. She signs all her artwork with the initials of her late father, Ahmed Zaki, honoring his legacy as her earliest supporter.

Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions such as “/mend/” (2023) and “Here, but not here” (2021) at Homme Gallery in DC, and in group shows including “Exchange 2024” at the Academy Art Museum and “Artists’ Choice: Regional Juried Group Show” at Foundry Gallery. She was part of the Sparkplug Collective 2024 at the DC Arts Center and recently served as a panelist for the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities’ PEF Grant Program.

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, methodically exploring subconscious states and the expansiveness of daily life. She creates codes, systematic structures, graphic language, and performative gestures to force viewers to question their assumptions about rules in the natural and formulaic world. The intimate juxtapositions of these concepts center awareness on our surrounding environment and the issues that perplex and shape us. Her many exhibition credits include the 53rd Venice Biennale as part of the United Arab Emirates and Abu Dhabi Pavilions; Sharjah Biennial; Dubai Next, Basel;  Institut du Monde Arabe; The Kunst Museum, Germany; The Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; Benin Biennial; FotoFest Biennial, Art in Houston, Texas; Smack Mellon gallery, New York; NYUAD Art Gallery; and Guggenheim Abu Dhabi.

Born in Lebanon to Palestinian parents, Fadia Jawdat is an interventionist artist processing multigenerational exile through mixed media. With a B.A. in Fine Arts from American University of Beirut and a Master's in Communication Design from Pratt Institute, she has been a leader in the marketing and design space in Beirut, New York, and Washington, DC. In 2019, she reinvented herself, leaving corporate work behind to reimagine her life as an artist. Her work has appeared in juried shows in New York, and  Washington, DC, at institutions such as Pratt Institute, Washington Studio School, and the DC Arts Center and has been published in ADI magazine and AGNI literary online journal in 2023 and 2024. She is currently a DC Art Center Sparkplug Collective 2025 member. Her work explores several media simultaneously. Paint, cut paper, and occasional 3D objects, together integrate the stories she is compelled to tell.

Hannah Atallah (b. 1994, Washington, DC) is a visual artist who draws on her Palestinian-Lebanese-Irish heritage. With a focus on large-scale public art projects and installations, she prioritizes the incorporation of community and relevant cultural contexts in her practice. Atallah has painted murals and exhibited work in the US, Mexico and Jordan. She has been the winner of nearly 20 grants and awards, notably with the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, the Baltimore Convention Center, and DC public schools. Her work has been acquired in public and private collections internationally.

Helen Zughaib was born in Beirut, Lebanon, living mostly in the Middle East and Europe before coming to the United States to study art at Syracuse University, earning her BFA from the College of Visual and Performing Arts. Her work has been widely exhibited in galleries and museums in the United States, Europe and Lebanon. Her paintings are included in many private and public collections, including the White House, World Bank, Library of Congress, the Arab American National Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the Barjeel Art Foundation Collection. Her work has been included in numerous Art in Embassy State Department exhibitions abroad, including Nigeria, Brunei, Iraq, and Sweden. Helen has served as Cultural Envoy to Palestine, Switzerland, Saudi Arabia and most recently, Abu Dhabi. Helen was awarded a 2021-2024 Inaugural Social Impact Practice residency at the John F. Kennedy Center/REACH, and is a 2024 -2025 Senior Fellow at Abraham Path Initiative.

Jackie Milad (Baltimore City, 1975) 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. Select exhibitions include The Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, MD), The Baltimore Museum of Art (Baltimore, MD), Academy Art Museum (Easton, MD), Weatherspoon Art Museum (Charlotte, NC), and The Mint Museum (Charlotte, NC). Jackie is a 2024 Creative Capital Grantee and the inaugural Alumni Ruby Grantee. She is also a multi-year recipient of the Individual Artist Grant from Maryland State Arts Council. Her work is included in several public collections, including, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Academy Art Museum, Johns Hopkins University Sheridan Library, Robert W. Deutsch Foundation, and Pizzuti Collection. Milad received her BFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and her MFA from Towson University. She is currently represented by SOCO Gallery in Charlotte, NC and Pentimenti Gallery in Philadelphia, PA.

Jillian Abir MacMaster is a Palestinian-American artist from Frederick, Maryland. She holds a BFA in photography from Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Utilizing photographic portraiture and cyanotype, she explores themes of power dynamics, religion, immigration, familial tradition, as well as anxiety, paranoia, and self-defense. She exhibits her work regionally, including solo exhibitions at The Delaplaine Arts Center, Griffin Art Center, and Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Frederick, and recent group exhibitions at the Washington County Museum of Arts in Hagerstown, MD and at The Halide Project in Philadelphia, PA. She curated an exhibition of LGTBQ+ artists, Infinite Growth, at the Frederick Arts Council in 2022 and co-curated a Women’s History Month exhibition, Embodied, at Frederick City Hall in 2025. Jillian is an active member of Frederick’s artistic community and believes in the power art has to unite and strengthen society.

Lama Dajani is a mixed media artist residing in  Bethesda, MD. She produces abstract, experimental, and gestural works that come to life spontaneously through a range of deliberately arranged contrasting materials, shapes, colors, and lines. Working from a place of uncertainty, her process reflects the perpetual tension between destruction and construction. Erasure is central to her process of transforming the haunting images of displacement, loss, and extinction into layered planes, just as excavating is central to reconstructing history. Mostly influenced by primitive art and ancient artifacts, Lama explores the mysterious layers and hidden connections of the mind. The end is the means or there is no end, just a multiple of beginnings and infinite choices.

Maria Habib is a multidisciplinary artist, designer, and educator from Beirut, Lebanon. Shaped by her experiences with displacement, her practice spans more than 20 years, crossing languages, borders, and institutions. She is the founder and principal of DesignMa, a creative advocacy design studio established in 2013. Her work centers on identity, space, and experience design, with a particular focus on printed and tactile media. As the former design director of The Corcoran Gallery of Art + Design, she collaborated with acclaimed artists, curators, and students to develop museum exhibitions, books, and academic curricula. Since 2006, she has also taught as adjunct faculty at The Corcoran and Maryland Institute College of Art. Her work has been recognized with awards from the Art Directors Club, AIGA, SEGD, UCDA, and HOW magazine.

Reem Bassous received her BA from The Lebanese American University and her MFA from The George Washington University. She started teaching drawing and painting in 2001 at The George Washington University, taught at the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa for 9 years, and at Leeward Community College at the University of Hawaiʻi for 7 years. Bassous continues her journey in education as Artistic Director and Head of Faculty at the Washington Studio School, as of the fall of 2023. Bassous’ regional and national exhibitions include solo shows at the Honolulu Museum of Art, SBCAST Gallery in Santa Barbara, and the Washington Studio School Gallery, in Washington DC. Her work has been reviewed by various publications which include the Washington Post, Art Asia Pacific and Star Advertiser. Bassous’ work is in permanent collections which include the Honolulu Museum of Art and Shangri La Museum for Islamic Art, Culture and Design.

Third Thursday

October 16, 6:15 pm

Curator Laila Abdul-Had Jadallah will facilitate a cultural majlis and conversation with a selection of artists who are featured in the exhibition titled Traces. Building on the Arabic meaning of the title, the speakers will talk about how their West Asian and North African roots inform their artistic practices in various ways, and about the historical ties of artists with ties to the region in Washington, D.C.

To learn more visit our Third Thursday web page.

بركة | Baraka

Sunday, October 19, 4-6PM
Freight Gallery, 2414 Douglas Street NE, Washington DC 20018

Baraka (بركة) is a collaborative installation featuring Hannah Atallah, Jackie Milad and Reem Bassous exploring the divine presence, power and spiritual energy of people, objects and tombs. Organized in conversation with the exhibition Traces (آثار ) at IA&A at Hillyer, the installation employs the Arabic term baraka as a homonym – simultaneously an act of recollection, and an act of putting what has been dispersed back together again. Through this multi-sensory installation, the artists transform Freight Gallery's 19th-century elevator into a portal, inviting us to expand our understanding of what spiritual wisdom and recovery can mean.

Image credit: Hannah Atallah, Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, an installation of hand tufted and woven works 2025. Courtesy of the artist.