In 2018 I was given the incredible opportunity to guest curate an exhibition of local artist Derek Gores’ work for the Foosaner Art Museum in Melbourne, Florida. The exhibition opened in November 2018, and spanned all six galleries of the museum, transforming and engaging each space in a new and unconventional way. The show highlighted not only Derek’s work, but his commitment to sustaining a local art world in his hometown.

I was invited by Apple to present two sessions of “Today at Apple” at the gorgeous new Apple Store and gallery at Carnegie Library in Washington, DC. I decided to offer two kids labs, both highlighting the idea of truly seeing with our eyes, and letting life and art unfold around us. One session explored doodling as a means to free our mind and explore the nooks and crannies of our truest creativity. In my second session, the “Unselfie Photo Walk for Kids”, I explained my personal philosophy on snapshot photography, and how we can show more about who we are and what we are experiencing by photographing our lives than ourselves.

I like to photograph my life and family with minimal intervention and maximal humor.

I started this series of drawings exploring the vast liminal space between two “oppositional” parts of my identity: Arab and American. These drawings- sometimes poignant, sometimes humorous- are the product of my constant doodling, and question where language ends and signs begin, as well as the parameters of negotiating an identity straddling two worlds that simultaneously encompass and reject each other.

This series documents Arab Americans in the Washington, DC region. This is my counterpoint to the constant sensationalized media coverage of Arabs and immigrants as Other. These environmental portraits offer insight into a very real and normal subsect of society.

Here are a few spots where my work has been published, including an issue of Art Papers magazine, which ran a special artist’s project featuring a few of the Mutations series. In her “Editor’s Desk” page, Editor Sylvie Fortin wrote that “Mutations subjects language to successive alterations that pressure the usual boundaries of east and west. In addition, Al-Kawas [maiden name] deftly takes on the challenges of a print project, addressing the material properties of the magazine. Her six page proposal quietly, yet powerfully, spams the publication- inflecting its entire contents with breaks and interruptions. It puts all in parenthesis.”