Meet the Muslim Artist Making Global Waves, One Brushstroke at a Time - Muslim Girl

Multitalented artist and entrepreneur Huda Hashim sat down with Muslim Girl to talk about how she sends a message with her art and how artists--especially in today's charged political climate--can raise awareness or even just serve as powerful reminders of the vibrant art Muslim creators have to offer.

Hashim addressed about these issues in interview with Muslim Girl, as well as discussing what kind of artist she strives to be, what inspired her to start her own company, incorporating her culture and faith into her art, the power of storytelling, advice for young Muslim women pursuing arts careers and more.

muslimgirl.com - There isn’t much that artist Huda Hashim cannot do. She is a painter, a calligrapher, and an interior designer. She creates and renders 3D environments and has worked on several animation shorts. Oh—and she started her own company, Hudarts, at the age of 20.

Huda Hashim received her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 3D animation and minored in visual arts at the University of Texas at Dallas. Merging the distinctive worlds of arts and technology, she hopes to innovate and challenge traditional ways of making art. Huda’s artwork consists of 3D visualizations, modern African and Islamic art.

Huda’s success in pursuing a non-traditional field is an inspiration to young Muslim women who have asked themselves, over and over again, if it’s worth it. Many girls aspire to be pioneers of the liberal arts—painters, writers, film producers—from a young age, but are often held back. Whether by the voices inside their own “rational” minds or the voices of their parents, young Muslim women are too often discouraged from becoming who they are meant to be.

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Awe-Inspiring Images Pay Tribute to Canada's Radical Black Feminists

Art has the power to inspire, illustrate, move us to action, and draw our attention to forgotten pieces of our own history—and one artist in Canada is bringing all of that together in a powerful series of images featuring black feminist heroes from Canada's history.

Black feminists often address—through their words or actions—intersections of racism, sexism, class oppression, gender identity and more in society. They argue that these issues are bound together in ways that compound the oppression that women—particularly women of color and others from multiple oppressed groups—experience.

What people may not always realize is that these pioneers fighting for human rights have been with us for centuries. Artist Naomi Moyer, a black woman living in Canada, wanted to draw more attention to Canada's black feminists. “I wanted to turn the few sentences that were written about these women from history books and online into a huge, colorful punch in the face,” she says in a feature by The Huffington Post. 

huffingtonpost.com - Mary Bibb was born in Rhode Island around 1820 as the daughter of free black Quakers. After becoming one of the first black woman teachers in North America, she involved herself in the anti-slavery movement.

However, following the 1850 passing of the Fugitive Slave Law, which demanded that all escaped slaves in America, including her husband, abolitionist Henry Bibb, be returned to their masters upon capture ― even if found in free states ― Bibb moved to Canada. Upon relocating, she and her husband began housing fugitive slaves in their home. Together they started publishing a newspaper, Voice of the Fugitive, the first major paper aimed at black Canadians.

Today, Bibb is considered the first black woman journalist in Canada. And yet, most Canadians do not even know her name. Self-taught artist Naomi Moyer, herself a black woman living in Canada, was disturbed by the lack of awareness surrounding figures like Bibb, women that Moyer could identify with and look up to.

“The school curriculum here is just as flawed and deficient as it is in the States,” Moyer told The Huffington Post. “Not one teacher, from kindergarten to college, gave me any book to read that was written by a black woman, let alone a black Canadian woman. The only kind of exposure most black people really got about ‘blackness’ or the black experience was through media and pop culture from the States.”

Moyer realized that it was extremely important for her to learn the names and stories of the women shaping Canadian black history. If no one else was going to teach her, she would do the research herself. The print series “Black Women in Canada” integrates Moyer’s research with graphic visuals that bring the under-acknowledged heroines to life.

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Afghanistan’s First Female Street Artist Has Taken Over Kabul’s Walls To Glorify Its Women

For many, "graffiti" might not evoke the power that some street artists hold to spread hope, awareness and powerful message—and Afghanistan may not bring to mind messages of women's empowerment. However, one street artist—Shamsia Hassani, who lives in Kabul—is changing that. The city's walls are her canvas, and she uses her striking works of art to spread messages of peace, strength, resiliency and hope to her community.

Read more, and see more of her work, in the full article at The Huffington Post.

The Huffington Post - A woman in a purple hijab sits playing the piano, a tear rolling down her cheek. She plays her solitary tune amongst a sea of blue skyscrapers, soaring above the cars that zoom beneath her unnoticed. This subject already wears her contradictions proudly — she is strong, she is vulnerable, she is graceful, creative, separate, sad. And yet, at least it seems, she calls out to no one, content to sit with her feelings and express herself creatively, freely, in peace.

This work of street art was made by Shamsia Hassani, widely known as the first prominent woman street artist in Afghanistan. Hassani was born in 1988 in Tehran to Afghan parents, eventually moving to Kabul to pursue her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in visual art. She currently resides in Kabul, where she turns the city’s walls into colorful canvases that spread a message of peace and hope to her community.

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16 Female Curators Shaking Things Up In 2016

Curators; who help build collections, organize events and exhibits, discover new art and more; help shape the art world--and many influential curators are women. Artnet News brings us 16 women curators to watch in 2016. Check out an excerpt and the list below, and read the full article at the link.  There's no shortage of female curators making their mark on the art world.

Here's a small sample of just a few women to keep your eye on this year, as we look forward to exhibitions such as "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" at the new Met Breuer in New York, the Beatriz Santiago Muñoz show at the New Museum, "Women of Abstract Expressionism" at the Denver Art Museum, and more.

1. Kelly Baum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

When Baum joined the Metropolitan Musem of Art as curator of postwar and contemporary art in the museum's department of modern and contemporary art in June 2015, her timing couldn't have been better.

Baum has become a key player as the museum prepares to unveil the new Met Breuer space (aka, the old Whitney Museum), curating "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" with her predecessor, Nicholas Cullinan, and the Met's European painting curator, Andrea Bayer. Baum comes to New York from Princeton University Art Museum, where she was the curator of modern and contemporary art.

The 16 female curators profiled are:

1. Kelly Baum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

2. Johanna Burton, New Museum, New York

3. Kalia Brooks, independent curator, New York

4. Gwen Chanzit, Denver Art Museum, Denver

5. Federica Chiocchetti, the Victoria and Albert Museum, London

6. Lauren Cornell, New Museum, New York

7. Astrid de Maismont, Gertrude and ArtList, New York

8. Amanda Hunt, Studio Museum in Harlem

9. Clara M. Kim, the Tate Modern, London

10. Koyo Kouoh, RAW Material Company, Dakar

11. Christine Macel, Centre Pompidou, Paris

12. Piper Marshall, Mary Boone Gallery, New York

13. Ceci Moss, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco

14. Selene Preciado, the Getty Foundation, Los Angeles

15. Lauren Ross, Virginia Commonwealth University Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond, Virginia

16. Jennifer Scanlan, Oklahoma Contemporary, Oklahoma City

Read about each curator in detail in the full article on Artnet.