Jelwa Ceremony,

2023

Alia Bensliman (born Tunis, Tunisia) and Khalilah Sabree (born Macon, GA) deliberately disrupt conventional divides between tradition and modernity and the sacred and the secular. As Muslim-American artists and educators deeply rooted in the Trenton community, their imagery grapples with human rights struggles and the challenges of cultural belonging. Bensliman’s images of Amazigh women focus on the Indigenous population of North Africa in richly patterned watercolors informed by local artistic motifs, with her own triple portrait as an introspective counterpoint. Sabree’s painting suite turns a photograph taken during Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, into a meditation on loss and the devastations of war. Seen together, the artists’ works testify to seemingly incompatible commitments: preserving cultural traditions that are under threat while forging visual vocabularies that resonate with their own unfolding identities. Through their experiments with technique and composition, the artists create visual repetitions that function as prayerful recitations, retelling time-honored stories from the depths of personal and spiritual experience.