The Spiritual is Political poster image designed by Layan Attari, 2025.
With Najah Alboushi, Haifa Bint-Kadi, Joanna Booth, Khwanchira Chindamanee, Feda Eid,
Meena Hasan, Jazzmen Lee-Johnson, Malda Smadi, and Katherine Toukhy.
Curated by: Malda Smadi
Opening Reception: Saturday, March 08, 2025, 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Visit: March 08 – 30, 2025, Friday – Sunday 1:00 – 6 pm. Other days by appointment.
Location: PS122 Gallery, 150 1st Ave., New York, NY 10009
In these challenging times following a climate of oppressive politics, we search for ways to make meaning, while also upholding strict forms of resistance, if only resistance to silencing, and to neutrality. War and violence are a continuous cycle of conquer and destruction, and we are once again reminded of the power structures at play that keep those in power more destructive, while those who are marginalized in a constant state of disempowerment, fear, paralysis, and isolation. As we are all subject to this collective trauma, many that belong to marginal communities experience a perpetual state of retraumatizing, carrying memories of past inflictions, from personal stories and journeys confronting oppressive systems—whether in society, government, or in the home—that further dislocate the body and spirit from safety.
We are witnessing more apparent and appalling examples of white supremacy that adhere to colonial, capitalist, and patriarchal systems, and ignore and invalidate the experiences and realities of the human spirit, and the natural world. Spirituality, which concerns the spirit, can be defined as an individual’s search for sacred meaning. Iranian-American author, Omid Safi, describes the spiritual as being about our bodies, our lives, and the spaces we inhabit in the physical world.
This exhibition brings together the works of artists whose practices reflect on their personal experiences and realities of marginalization, while offering alternate ways of resistance. Their practices range from painting, printmaking, textiles, glass, mosaic and material exploration, while integrating processes of deep introspection that connect back with the spirit. These processes are meditative, and they labor towards the soul’s inherent need for connection, acceptance, peace, and love, and necessitate access, grounding, resistance, liberation, and transformation.
Najah Alboushi and Haifa Bint-Kadi reference architecture, plant life, and symbols from their ancestral homeland between Syria, Palestine, and the Caribbean to expand on the notion of borders and decolonization in intricately made sculptures of glass and mosaics. Joanna Booth and Feda Eid consider protection and memory in their material symbolisms such as with handwoven fabric or antique utensils. Meena Hasan navigates the politics and aesthetics of ornamentation and identity of South Asia through textured compositions that engage colonial and immigrant histories. Khwanchira Chindamanee and Malda Smadi transform paper into forms that evoke visibility, invisibility, dislocation, and the cycle of life and death through slow processes of making. Jazzmen Lee-Johnson’s work interrogates the ambiguities of the colonialist narrative on slavery through wild and laborious linocuts that reimagine Black agency and resistance within oppressive systems. While Katherine Toukhy draws from improvised movement, land-based imagery, and her Egyptian heritage to create figurative abstractions that nurture a desire for liberation and decolonization.
The questions that this exhibition aims to answer, are:
How do we resist violence as a practice?
What do acts of care and reparation look like?
How do we oppose the fast production of capitalism?
What does meditation, slowness, and mindfulness teach us about resistance?
Artist Biographies
Najah Alboushi
Najah Alboushi is an American-Syrian artist who grew up in the Midwest. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point with a BA in Journalism and Studio Arts and from California College of the Arts with an MFA in glass. Najah is now living and working in Oakland, California as an independent artist and contractor, flameworking instructor and art fabricator.
Haifa Bint-Kadi
Haifa Bint-Kadi is a first-generation Palestinian American artist with Caribbean heritage whose career spans over 40 years. She received her M.F.A. from Istituto d’Arte per il mosaico in Ravenna, Italy. She works mainly in mosaic, but also maintains painting and sculpture in her studio practice. Haifa’s work is grounded in cultural materiality which acts as a form of de-colonization and resistance against systems grounded in oppression as it heals, affirms and establishes self-identity. She has designed and fabricated public art mosaics across New York. Her studio work has been shown in galleries across the nation. Her largest project to date is a mosaic park in the quad of Suny Oneonta College. As a 2024 NYSCA grantee she recently completed a series of mosaic “Dream Palaces” to hold the joy and celebratory moments of Arab culture. Bint-Kadi curates the Riverfront Art Gallery for the City of Yonkers and works as an adjunct professor for Suny Purchase College.
Joanna Booth
Joanna Booth (she/they) is a multimedia printmaker and textile artist from Philadelphia, PA. Currently based in Providence, her work explores themes of home, social narrative, memory and identity. She received her BFA in Studio Art and Black Studies from Amherst College (‘19) and completed an MFA in Printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design (‘24). She has exhibited work across New England and Philadelphia and attended the Fabric Workshop and Museum (FWM) Post Graduate Apprenticeship Residency as well as the Wassaic Project Artist Residency. Joanna has also worked as an educator and has taught various printmaking classes and workshops at AS220 Community Studio, the Rhode Island School of Design, Dia : Teens, and more.
@joannaboothart | www.joannabooth.squarespace.com
Khwanchira Chindamanee
Nual Chindamanee is an American-Thai artist with a deep connection to her Southeast Asian roots. Born and raised in Thailand, she later pursued her passion for art and earned a Master of Fine Art in printmaking at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2023. Now based in Bloomington, IN, Nual’s art career has flourished as she continues to explore the concept of impermanence, portraying the intricate cycle of birth, aging, and death. Her diverse art practice spans various techniques, including printmaking, installation, sculpture, artist-made paper, felt, growing mycelium, mushrooms, and plants. Nual’s artistic journey is guided by a profound respect for nature and the environment. She is intentional about her choice of materials, prioritizing ecological responsibility in her work. Drawn to the captivating hup taem murals of northeast Thailand, Nual is inspired to preserve their essence through her creations. Throughout her art, she aims to capture the essence of impermanence. Nual’s understanding of the continual cycle of transformation stems from her childhood experiences of traditional Thai life, which form the foundation of her physical and spiritual self.
Feda Eid
Feda Eid is a Lebanese diaspora photographer and visual artist living in the occupied lands of Wampanoag and Massachusetts People- so called Quincy, MA. Feda studied Sociology at Regis College and photography at New England School of Photography. Her work has been exhibited at the Peabody Essex Museum, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Lesley University, and The Shed NY among others. She was 2019 Luminary and Visiting Studio Artist at The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, 2022 Artist in Residence at Mass MoCA Studios, 2022 Collective Futures Fund grantee, 2024 Foundation For Contemporary Arts grantee and awarded WBUR’s 2024 The Makers, Boston’s 10 artists of color whose work you should know.
Meena Hasan
Meena Hasan’s artworks navigate the politics and aesthetics of heritage by drawing from processes and forms sourced from her index of personal and historical textiles, patterns and decorations. She uses paint, inks and a variety of papers to develop textured and exuberant psychosomatic surfaces. She received her B.A. in Studio Art from Oberlin College in 2009 and her MFA in Painting & Printmaking from Yale School of Art in 2013, where she won the Carol Schlosberg Memorial Prize for Painting. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Center for Book Arts, NYC, Deitch Projects, NYC, Nathalie Karg Gallery, New York, NY and at the 2022 New England Triennial at the deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum and Fruitlands Museum among many others. Recent two-person and solo exhibitions have been shown at Stowaway Gallery, Los Angeles, CA in 2025 and at LAUNCHF18, NYC in 2022. She has a forthcoming solo exhibition at The Old Stone House of Brooklyn, NY this May 2025. She is currently an Associate Professor in Painting at RISD, Providence while living and maintaining her studio in New York City.
@i_meen_ah | www.meenahasan.com
Jazzmen Lee-Johnson
Jazzmen Lee-Johnson is a visual artist, scholar, composer, and curator. Her practice centers on the interplay of animation, printmaking, music, and dance, informed by a yearning to understand how our current circumstance is tethered to the trauma of the past. She received her BFA in Film, Animation, and Video at RISD, her MA in Public Humanities at Brown University, and a heavy dose of education working with youth in Baltimore, South Africa, India, New York City and Providence. Her work has been shown around the world and is held in many collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, RISD Museum, Allen Memorial Art Museum of Oberlin College, and UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive.
@jazzleejohnson | www.jazzmenleejohnson.com
Malda Smadi
Malda Smadi (b. Damascus, Syria) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Providence, RI. She completed an MFA in Painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2023 and a BFA in Visual Communication at the American University in Dubai in 2008. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Penland School of Craft (2024), and the recipient of the Salama Foundation Emerging Artist Fellowship (2017) and the Sheikha Manal Award for Painting (2016). Smadi has showcased her work in group exhibitions in the US and the UAE, including the most recent at Selva (NYC), a group show which highlights Arab Women in Arts, Field Projects (NYC) part of the graduating painting cohort from RISD, and at Fathom Gallery (Washington DC) commemorating the Emirati Women’s Day in collaboration with the UAE Embassy in Washington, among others.
@idamsadlam | www.maldasmadi.com
Katherine Toukhy
Katherine Toukhy has lived in unceded Lenapehoking/ Brooklyn for over a decade and grew up part of a small Coptic Egyptian diaspora in Rhode Island. Toukhy has received support from The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, BRIC, The Laundromat Project, The Rema Hort Mann Foundation, City Artist Corps, and Brooklyn Arts Council, among others. In 2023 she was an artist in residence at The Arab American National Museum where her work was acquired as part of the collection. She is currently a Culture Push fellow. She is also a certified meditation instructor and creative facilitator who combines mindfulness, movement, and art to work with people.
@kathoray | www.katherinetoukhy.com
Free Public Events
Performance: Rooted Revelations
Saturday, March 08, 6:30 pm
Feda Eid performs Rooted Revelations, which imagines household objects, foods and sensory practices as openings to ancestral or intuitive knowledge. These everyday, nostalgic objects and cultural traditions reveal themselves as reminders that we may access Home anywhere we are. Beyond that, access to Spirit, the Divine, and what is deeply rooted beyond colonial and imperial borders. Honoring those that watch over us, both seen and unseen, and continuing to stand tall in strength, defiance and resistance- past, present, and future.
Workshop: Your grief is welcome here
Thursday, March 20 (vernal equinox) 6–8 pm
Katherine Toukhy invites a small group to an interactive workshop in the gallery. We will practice drawing and movement as tools to track our inner sensations and put together a collective visual poem from these explorations. Toukhy enjoys sharing these techniques, sourcing from a lineage of practitioners who connect personal embodiment to political transformation.
$20 suggested donation.
Artist Talk and Closing Reception
Saturday, March 29, 7–8 pm
Join the artists for the closing reception at 7 pm with an informal talk on the conceptual narrative of the exhibition and the process of making their work.