For New York University student Thasmin Tabassoom, the Feb. 23 Soir\u00e9e was the first time that she had visited 421. \u201cWhen the performer was finding all the commonalities we had, it was a way for people to open up to each other,\u201d Tabassoom said. \u201cIn New York, people would not have actually told the person next to them what home was to them. It got really loud as people were engaging. It seems that is what people come to 421 to do.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Established ten years ago inside of a renovated warehouse, the 421 Arts Campus is a mixed-media arts center dedicated to showcasing the work of both established and emerging artists through providing grants and resources. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With the goal of making art more accessible, 421 has a gallery open to the public and curates year-round free events including film screenings, food tours, writers\u2019 groups, performances and Ramadan events. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Themes of memory and connection were explored at the Pencil In: Writers\u2019 Circle workshop on Feb. 20. After gallery hours, 16 writers -mostly women- gathered at a table to pass around their computers and edit each other\u2019s work. The pieces included an Emirati\u2019s poetry about being hospitalized for depression and a New Yorker\u2019s short story about a woman investigating how familial influence affected her perception of gender roles in romance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
While sipping steaming pistachio lattes from the campus\u2019 Auro Caf\u00e9, writers also had the choice to respond to journal prompts taped on the wall, such as: \u201cI am writing letters and I want to send one to you because\u201d and \u201cRetell a story you used to hear in your childhood. Change one key attribute of the story.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The workshop moderator, author, Purva Grover, wanted to create an environment where people feel they can tell their story openly and without judgement.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn the arts and in writing you cannot go in alone,\u201d Grover said. \u201cYou have to hold each other\u2019s hand and you have to go together. This is that space.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By expanding 421\u2019s workshops to include more mediums, Grover believes that people can discover art in the ordinary and free themselves of the notion that they need to know about specific techniques or styles to enjoy it.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt is important to have multiple dimensions, so people do not think art is only in museums”<\/p>Purva Grover<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Audiences also participated in the Stitch In for Palestine workshop, in which artist and instructor Joanna Karakat led participants through a brief history of Palestinian embroidery and taught them to cross stitch. Patterns included the outline of a gravesite from Hebron which encouraged participants to \u201cmeditate and pray for those departed souls in Gaza whose bodies have not been buried.\u201d Additionally, participants could stitch a tatreez flower or a cypress tree to reflect Palestinian embroidery motifs, often inspired by nature and everyday surroundings.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEspecially when you\u2019re dealing with an ancestral craft, for an instructor, it is really important to have a deep understanding of the craft because that way you can teach it ethically,” Karakat said. <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A performer strode to the front of the wooden stage and asked the people sitting before him, \u201cAre you coming from home? Are you coming from a place that you are living, but is not home? How many of you have a scent or taste that reminds you of home?\u201d The 35 people in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":501,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[13,27,28,29],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-abu-dhabi","tag-art","tag-culture","tag-middle-east"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":502,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/502"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/nyujournalismprojects.org\/dispatches\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/03\/Screen-Shot-2025-03-12-at-5.02.12-PM.png\")
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