Banner image:&nbsp;nouf saleh, Map of Albahar Alahamar, 2024. Image on silk.

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As you step into <a href="https://noufsaleh.com/">nouf </a><a href="https://noufsaleh.com/">saleh</a>&rsquo;s solo exhibition <a href="https://www.mplsart.com/events/black-memory-red-sea-nouf-saleh" target="_blank">Black Memory Red Sea</a>, a soft neon-blue sign reading &ldquo;sawad&rdquo; (&ldquo;Blackness&rdquo; in Arabic) greets you from across the gallery with quiet urgency. Through intimate family photographs, mixed-media installations, and a map linking Ethiopia and Yemen, saleh confronts the erasure of Afro-Arab communities through an exploration of her family&rsquo;s heritage and migrations across the Red Sea.

The exhibition, located in&nbsp;<a href="https://publicfunctionary.org/">Public Functionary</a>&rsquo;s Upstairs gallery, addresses themes of displacement, assimilation, survival through secrecy, and preservation of her Afro-Arab roots in a world that seeks to suppress them.

&ldquo;I grew up in Yemen. Part of assimilation is not thinking about the Ethiopian side of me,&rdquo; saleh said. &ldquo;Anti-Blackness is global &mdash;&nbsp;it shows up in different ways. Growing up in Yemen, we were able to embody some of our Ethiopian-ness within the house or with other families like ours&hellip;but once we went out in public, we were Yemeni.&rdquo; In practice, this meant speaking Arabic instead of Amharic and adopting local customs &mdash; a survival tool in a society where Blackness is often marginalized.

&ldquo;Part of surviving&nbsp;was to remove that from our imagination that we are Black,&rdquo; saleh said. &ldquo;I think I&rsquo;m the only one in my generation that understands and (disfluently)&nbsp;speaks Amharic.&rdquo;

When saleh moved to the United States to study architecture at St. Olaf College, her understanding of her identity deepened. &ldquo;Being in the U.S. and learning more about how race functions here, I think it gave me more language to think of my experience or even see myself as a Black person,&rdquo; she said.

Black Memory Red Sea combines works created over several years, informed by her architectural background and family archive. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m re-membering my Blackness through this work,&rdquo; saleh said, with her research and artistic exploration becoming a language for processing the complexities of growing up muwalladah &mdash; an Arabic term meaning &ldquo;mixed blood.&rdquo;

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<img alt="A blue &amp; white photo of a couple framed into a wooden structure in an art gallery" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/05ca247c-27b6-4853-ab3c-317af7de9109/05ca247c-27b6-4853-ab3c-317af7de9109.full.jpg" />nouf saleh, Goree, Ethiopia, 2022.&nbsp;Cyanotype, wood sculpture. Photo by Myah Goff.

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The show&rsquo;s centerpiece is a cedar-wood sculpture holding a single photograph of saleh&rsquo;s Ethiopian grandmother and Yemeni grandfather, reproduced twice in cyanotype and facing each other above arches inspired by Yemeni architecture. &ldquo;That image was one of the few I grew up seeing of my grandparents,&rdquo; saleh said. Though she never met them and knows little about the photo&rsquo;s origin, it offers a glimpse into her family&rsquo;s past.

&ldquo;My mom and my aunts and uncles would not give us stories from their upbringing in Ethiopia,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;It would be like, &lsquo;why are you asking these questions?&rsquo; So, this felt like a way for me to connect with them in my own way.&rdquo;

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<img alt="Three pieces of paper with horizontal bands of colorful cropped photos hang on a wall lit with purple" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/e228dd49-9b0b-40c5-8cc8-54413cb4f9f4/e228dd49-9b0b-40c5-8cc8-54413cb4f9f4.full.jpg" /><img alt="Horizontal bands of colorful cropped photography printed on white paper" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/c5b5cafa-d11a-4d8f-85df-c3e569853cdf/c5b5cafa-d11a-4d8f-85df-c3e569853cdf.full.jpg" />nouf saleh,&nbsp;الجنة بين يديها&nbsp;Paradise in Her Hands&nbsp;(installation view and detail), 2024.&nbsp;Silkscreen on paper. Photos by Myah Goff.

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Still, there&rsquo;s a palpable sense of secrecy in saleh&rsquo;s work. Her childhood photographs, titled Paradise in her Hands,&nbsp;show only the hands of matriarchs &mdash;&nbsp;reaching, holding, or supporting.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Growing up, we were taught that &lsquo;paradise&rsquo; is under our mother&rsquo;s feet,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Honoring one&rsquo;s mother is like a pathway to heaven, or paradise, so in this series, I am working with that, but I wanted to focus on the hands of the women that shaped us and how they held us, raised us, and cared for us in different ways.&rdquo;

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<img alt="Blue cyanotypes on paper hang horizontally in a room like flying carpets" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0df435b0-0939-4ed9-92f9-472d4067d8e8/0df435b0-0939-4ed9-92f9-472d4067d8e8.full.jpg" /><img alt="Abstracted photograph on draping blue fabric" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/f978a1d4-e7c2-4ad2-a8a1-40add5586060/f978a1d4-e7c2-4ad2-a8a1-40add5586060.full.jpg" />nouf saleh, Dinibi: Ode to Cousinship&nbsp;(installation view and detail), 2023.&nbsp;Cyanotype on silk, coral beads, edited song. Photos by Myah Goff.

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Other images, in the installation titled Dinbi: Ode to Cousinship,&nbsp;are barely visible, printed faintly on blue silk that drifts down from the ceiling like memories caught in fog. They seem to be her way of saying, This is what I have, this is what I remember, even if it is mostly formed through distant memories. They force you to lean in, straining to discern, and as you do, the song <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXAqEMzNS6o">&ldquo;Dinibi&rdquo;</a> by Ethiopian musician Ahmed Teshome begins to play. A song that evokes memories of a childhood game saleh played with her cousins.

&ldquo;I think of them as my first friends, running around and learning how to relate and be in the world,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;This is my story,&nbsp;and it&#39;s not only mine,&nbsp;so I wanted to bring them with me.&rdquo;

Her limited family archive mirrors the fragmented histories of countless diasporic families, including my own. My grandparents left Durango, Mexico, in the 1960s and settled in Chicago&rsquo;s Pilsen neighborhood, a hub of Irish, German, Czech, and Mexican immigrants. When my grandfather became a U.S. citizen, he changed his birthday to match the day the Declaration of Independence was signed, giving birth to a new, distinctly American version of himself. This act of redefining oneself and silencing the past for survival is a universal experience. saleh&rsquo;s work navigates this dislocation by capturing the resilience of family as a grounding force in the diaspora experience.

&nbsp;

<img alt="Two blue neon words: &quot;sawad, sawad&quot;" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/d6b10579-ad13-48a0-a28e-d25e7ce60076/d6b10579-ad13-48a0-a28e-d25e7ce60076.full.jpg" />nouf saleh, Untitled (sawad x2), 2024. Neon. Photo by Myah Goff.

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&ldquo;I hope [this show] complicates the notions of what it means to be mixed, and I don&rsquo;t speak for all Afro-Arabs,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;This is only one Afro-Arab experience.&rdquo;

While the exhibit may not reveal everything about saleh&rsquo;s story, she gives us the bones. It is a family portrait not solely bound by history but by feeling &mdash; a map through which viewers, too, can trace their own lineage.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

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<img alt="A woman stands next to a grid of black and white photos" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/4c09461f-fd06-459b-8fc8-fdc7a6507187/4c09461f-fd06-459b-8fc8-fdc7a6507187.full.jpg" />nouf saleh stands beside Untitled (Goree), 2021. Prints. Photo by Myah Goff.

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<a href="https://publicfunctionary.org/news/nouf-saleh" target="_blank">Black Memory Red Sea</a> is on view at Public Functionary through November 30. Gallery hours are Thursday &mdash;&nbsp;Saturday, 12 &mdash;&nbsp;6 pm. To see more of the artist&#39;s work, visit <a href="https://noufsaleh.com" target="_blank">noufsaleh.com</a> or follow her on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/noufananah/" target="_blank">@noufananah</a>.

There will be an Artist Talk on Saturday, November 23, at 6pm.

'Black Memory Red Sea' at Public Functionary weaves together family photographs and a Yemeni-inspired architecture installation to create a portrait of saleh's Ethiopian-Yemeni identity

Tracing roots across the Red Sea: nouf saleh’s ode to the Muwalladeen community

Banner image: Jayce the Maker,&nbsp;My Left Pocket.&nbsp;Polymer clay.&nbsp;Photo by&nbsp;Travis Abaddon.

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Sometimes you have to create the right time.

<a href="https://www.instagram.com/dee_and_dee_and_dee/" target="_blank">Danielle Pebbles</a>, who co-founded the <a href="https://www.oacmn.com" target="_blank">Otherworldly Arts Collective</a>&nbsp;with fellow artists Jon Reese (<a href="http://www.instagram.com/pseud0ersatz/" target="_blank">@pseud0ersatz</a>) and Renee Chartier (<a href="https://www.instagram.com/opaquepastels/" target="_blank">@opaquepastels</a>), had thought about opening a gallery later in life. She&rsquo;d seen artists take that path as they got older and finally had time and space. But a series of events in her and fellow collective members&rsquo; lives prompted the group to reevaluate last year.

&ldquo;We met one day and I was like, &lsquo;I don&rsquo;t want to be at the end of my life before we start doing something like this,&rsquo;&rdquo; Pebbles recalled. &ldquo;Let&rsquo;s try it. If it fails in two years, okay, but I don&rsquo;t want to be at the end of my life still waiting for it.&rdquo;

It had been a difficult period for Pebbles&nbsp;and many of the collective&rsquo;s permanent staff, no less because everyone was coming off of the height of the pandemic, which Pebbles&nbsp;calls a zombie apocalypse. After a few years of scaled-back shows and events &mdash; including annual themed exhibitions Gods &amp; Monsters, SafeWord,&nbsp;The Unicorn Art Show, and&nbsp;the&nbsp;Drop In Skate Deck Art Show&nbsp;at various locations &mdash; the time felt right to look for a permanent home.&nbsp;

The group opened its gallery, called ALTR, last month in the Strong Scott Building. Bustling on the Saturday of their most recent opening, the building is also home to Norseman Distillery and several other studio spaces in Northeast Minneapolis.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="Skeletons and candles in an altar lit with red light" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/157ced45-7d45-4883-963a-e6d8eb924f60/157ced45-7d45-4883-963a-e6d8eb924f60.full.jpg" /><img alt="Visitors in an art gallery point at works on the wall" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/31dea6fd-2995-4c59-be69-d1ed7cb6660f/31dea6fd-2995-4c59-be69-d1ed7cb6660f.full.jpg" />Scenes from Beyond the Veil in late October,&nbsp;Otherworldly Arts Collective&#39;s opening exhibition in their new space, featuring a group show and a seance to benefit the Ladies of the Lakes, a 501c3 who bill themselves as &quot;a razzle-dazzle gaggle of drag nuns that strive for inclusion and love in our community.&quot; Photos by Travis Abaddon.

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<h2>A new space for new worlds</h2>

ALTR began its first line-up of programming with a seance-themed show for Halloween, and is currently home to MiniARTure, an exhibition of small-scale work curated by Jackie Platt. As OAC settles into its new home, the focus has been on doing shows that spark joy during a busy time for the collective&rsquo;s members.&nbsp;

&ldquo;All of us were burning the candle at both ends with our shows going on outside of this space and the shows we were planning for this new space,&rdquo; said Pebbles. &ldquo;We were thinking about, &lsquo;How do we do this without overwhelming ourselves and becoming resentful of this space?&rsquo;&rdquo;&nbsp;

Platt, who also works as the group&rsquo;s accountant, says miniature art has become a special interest lately.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Everything that&rsquo;s in scale is super interesting to me. The question is, how do I take this object and recreate the same level of detail as if it were full scale?&rdquo; To showcase the many different ways that artists approach this quandary, the show hosts a group of over 40 artists all working in various miniature formats.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="Mini model bedroom with Christian Slater posters on the wall" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/84c5f91a-ee85-4faf-ba99-b6cfd4fa67a0/84c5f91a-ee85-4faf-ba99-b6cfd4fa67a0.full.jpg" /><img alt="Miniature model bedroom on pedestal with magnifying lens." class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/9b60167d-f3d1-4a54-97fb-f4ca8a337401/9b60167d-f3d1-4a54-97fb-f4ca8a337401.full.jpg" />Jenna McLeod,&nbsp;Totally Outrageous Sleepover.&nbsp;Mixed media. Top photo by Travis Abaddon; bottom photo by Bridget Kranz.

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It&rsquo;s fitting that one of the first shows in the new gallery space &mdash; a home for OAC&rsquo;s immersive style of curation&nbsp;&mdash;&nbsp;is home to small worlds of its own. Not all of the work in the show is three-dimensional. There are miniature drawings, paintings, and embroidery hung on the walls. But there is a fair amount of sculptural work, creating fantastical worlds at a small scale that the viewer can get down and peer into.&nbsp;

The show, at its core, is fun. There are small prints of made-up mythological animals. There&rsquo;s an itsy bitsy spider with legs peeking out from under a cowboy hat. On the second night of its opening, people of all ages were in the gallery and even the youngest visitors were enjoying the show.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Fun&rdquo; is also how OAC member&nbsp;Juan Garcia describes the feeling of opening ALTR. &ldquo;Seeing everyone&rsquo;s faces while they&rsquo;re looking at everything is so much fun,&rdquo; he said, looking around the crowded room while helping visitors at a dedicated merch table that sold artists&rsquo; creations alongside the work on the walls.&nbsp;

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<img alt="Sculpture of a felt mouse reading a book inside a clock" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/36603fd5-b7f9-469b-a781-c235a2973b3e/36603fd5-b7f9-469b-a781-c235a2973b3e.full.jpg" /><img alt="Diorama of cartoon animals" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/8324e38b-8dc6-4de4-9fc7-ad86dd981732/8324e38b-8dc6-4de4-9fc7-ad86dd981732.full.jpg" /><img alt="People looking at artwork in a gallery" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/f7da3555-27c2-4db4-9065-fa0a8cf42323/f7da3555-27c2-4db4-9065-fa0a8cf42323.full.jpg" />Top: Work by Jenna McLeod. Middle: Work by Jen Van Kaam. Bottom: Visitors getting up close to enjoy the work&nbsp;in&nbsp;MiniARTure. Photos by Travis Abaddon.&nbsp;

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<h2>Getting comfortable and prioritizing access</h2>

Comfort and accessibility were two of the group&rsquo;s priorities when creating their new home. Accessibility was at the top of the list, partially due to Garcia&rsquo;s personal experience navigating inaccessible spaces while recovering from a serious injury. It narrowed the search quite a bit, as many buildings open to artists are older and may not be ADA-compliant.&nbsp;

On top of being in an accessible building, the group wanted to create a space that was comfortable for all visitors. The hope is that people will venture out to explore shows that may be new to them without the often added discomfort of getting used to an entirely new place.&nbsp;

&ldquo;My joke is that Minnesotans are really uncomfortable when we can&rsquo;t find parking. I feel like it&rsquo;s a leftover of getting your car towed and going to the impound lot,&rdquo; said Pebbles. &ldquo;Once you experience that, you need to know where you&rsquo;re going to park. If it&rsquo;s not easy, people will just leave.&rdquo;

Luckily, there&rsquo;s plenty of parking both on and off the street at the new location. Beyond the parking and elevators, balloons and signage welcomed people to the building and the event.

&nbsp;

<img alt="Woman holding baby dressed as a pumpkin" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/03208d67-2be7-4e30-9aea-ed4ea481dfd9/03208d67-2be7-4e30-9aea-ed4ea481dfd9.full.jpg" /> 
Danielle Pebbles and her niece at Beyond the Veil. Photo by Travis Abaddon.

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<h2>What&rsquo;s next for OAC&rsquo;s annual shows</h2>

&ldquo;The first step is getting people comfortable with this space, over and over again,&rdquo; said Pebbles. &ldquo;By adding one of our bigger shows here,&nbsp;hopefully it will get people comfortable to come to maybe a show that they&rsquo;re less familiar with.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The collective is exploring if and how to transition these perennial events. Pebbles says Gods &amp; Monsters and Drop In will likely continue as is. The former has unique space requirements and the latter is an ongoing collaboration with Rogue Citizen and Modist Brewing, which hosts the event. The collective is exploring how to thoughtfully move SafeWord &mdash; which showcases a wide variety of erotic-themed artwork &mdash;&nbsp;into its new location, working closely with the building&rsquo;s owners, fellow tenants, artists, and a licensed sex therapist.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="Skateboard painted with eyeball laying on field of clover" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/0104b38b-3ed2-455b-b9b9-4d68d4b914ce/0104b38b-3ed2-455b-b9b9-4d68d4b914ce.full.jpg" /><img alt="Painting of a horse with plane contrails in the air above to look like a unicorn horn" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/ec59166f-b93c-40e6-8229-736047fb7fe5/ec59166f-b93c-40e6-8229-736047fb7fe5.full.jpg" />Top: Work by Monica Helland from Drop-In Skate Deck Show. Courtesy of the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/otherworldlyartscollective/" target="_blank">OAC Instagram</a>. Bottom: Work by Emily Brown for The Unicorn Art Show. Courtesy of the <a href="https://www.instagram.com/imaoddduck/" target="_blank">artist&#39;s Instagram</a>.

&nbsp;

The collective&rsquo;s longest-running show, The Unicorn Art Show, celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. This year will also mark the last Unicorn Art Show, Pebbles says. It&rsquo;s been an integral part of the collective&rsquo;s programming for the past decade plus, and now feels like a natural stopping point.&nbsp;&nbsp;

&ldquo;The Unicorn Art Show is so large and it has had such a huge following for so long,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;We wanted to do the last show with Jackson Flats and their residents because they&rsquo;ve been with us for so long. We also have an outdoor aerial show that we do with it, we&rsquo;ve had mermaids in kiddie&nbsp;pools. It has its own community of fantasy enthusiasts and we may not be able to support it in this space.&rdquo;

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<h2>Coming up at ALTR</h2>

Another perk of the new space is that OAC can now host other arts collectives that don&rsquo;t have their own exhibition space. Rogue Citizen is putting on the next show, a one-night exhibition on December 13. Called Living Wage,&nbsp;the exhibition will showcase works created in an hour all priced starting at $23, the average living wage in the United States.&nbsp;

Pebbles also hopes to create a space for artists to socialize and share their skills, something she was involved in prior to the pandemic.&nbsp;

&ldquo;The goal is for Otherworldly to have a good presence in the arts community,&rdquo; said Platt. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re happy to have this space and we&rsquo;re excited to be able to host other people.&rdquo;

As visitors enjoyed the miniature characters and worlds created by the artists in MiniARTure, the collective continued building a new world of its own.&nbsp;◼︎&nbsp;

&nbsp;

<img alt="&quot;Living Wage&quot; art exhibition poster" class="img-responsive" src="https://storage.googleapis.com/mplsart-cdn-central/FileContainers/a1a5acfa-ea8d-4ca7-82f4-35225465659b/a1a5acfa-ea8d-4ca7-82f4-35225465659b.full.jpg" /> 
The next show at ALTR, Living Wage, in which six artists will show 40 paintings made in one hour each, priced at a minimum of the American living wage of $23.&nbsp;

 
MiniARTure is on view at ALTR with gallery hours November 14, 6&nbsp;&ndash;&nbsp;10pm, &amp; November 16, 12 &ndash; 5pm. The gallery is located in the Strong Scott Building at&nbsp;451 NE Taft St, Suite #22 in Minneapolis.

To learn more, visit&nbsp;<a href="https://oacmn.com" target="_blank">oacmn.com</a> or follow them on Instagram <a href="https://www.instagram.com/otherworldlyartscollective/" target="_blank">@otherworldlyartscollective</a>.

ALTR Gallery will be home to a variety of new exhibitions this year, as the collective also explores transitioning some of its perennial shows

Strange New World: Otherworldly Arts Collective opens gallery in Northeast

Looking for more?&nbsp;The Holiday Shopping Guide will be updated regularly throughout the season. Check back often for new events. Also, be sure to check out the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/calendar/upcoming">upcoming exhibition calendar</a>. 
 
Get in the Guide!&nbsp;Looking to include your sale or holiday event in our guide?&nbsp;<a href="https://www.mplsart.com/written/2024/09/2024-holiday-shopping-guide-information">apply here</a>.

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