VSW Salon Salon Spring 2024

March 28: In Dialogue with Mara Ahmed

7-9pm in-person in the microcinema

Will also be livestreamed via twitch

  • Mara Ahmed is an interdisciplinary artist and award winning activist filmmaker. Mara’s documentaries center marginalized voices and focus on communities grappling with nuanced experiences around racism, colonization and islamophobia. Mara will present a dialogue between her new film, Return to Sender, and VSW’s video, film and lantern slide archives. Return to Sender interrogates colonial imagery of women, and Mara will use clips from her film and juxtapose them with images and footage from VSW’s archive to make connections to current political power systems of white supremacy, patriarchy and ongoing social justice movements in Rochester. The evening will culminate in a discussion with Mara Ahmed facilitated by Hernease Davis, the Assistant Curator of Education and Public Programs.

    This program features excerpts from tapes found in the Portable Channel Collection at VSW: Police Brutality (1972), Kunstler on Attica (1971), and Outtakes from “B’ism Allah” (1975).

    Best known for her non-linear multimedia work, interdisciplinary artist Mara Ahmed produces documentaries, soundscapes, and artwork that trespass political borders and challenge colonial logics. Mara was born in Lahore and educated in Belgium, Pakistan, and the US. She is presently based on Long Island. Her art practice reflects these displacements and multiplicities. Mara’s most recent film is entitled, Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation, which was awarded a NYSCA grant in 2023. Mara will present a dialogue between Return to Sender, and VSW’s video, film and lantern slide archives. Return to Sender interrogates colonial imagery of women, and Mara will use clips from her film and juxtapose them with images and footage from VSW’s archive to make connections to current political power systems of white supremacy, patriarchy and ongoing social justice movements in Rochester.

    Return to Sender: Women of Color in Colonial Postcards & the Politics of Representation will premiere in Rochester on May 4, 2024 at ROC Cinema.

    This program will also be livestreamed via twitch.tv.

    Suggested: $10 [tickets]

    [Download Program PDF]

    The VSW Salon is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts and by the ArtWorks program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

             

  • Film stills from Return to Sender (2023), Directed by Mara Ahmed. From left to right - Sumayia Islam, Fatimah Arshad, and Urvashi Bhattacharya. Image courtesy of the artist.