CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

The House of Kal invites participants for a two-day community ritual and mural painting workshop with artist-in-residence Vicky Shajehan, a trans/non-binary community art practitioner from Colombo, Sri Lanka. Shahjehan is a self taught artist from Colombo’s Slave Island neighborhood, working with community members through rituals and storytelling, towards large scale public murals. Shahjehan combines spiritual, healing and visualizing techniques from Muslim traditions, such as henna practice. At the House of Kal at nGbK, she invites participants interested in representing their own stories of migration, refugeehood and empowerment, to work with her collaboratively on a public mural and a shared creative healing process.

Notes on Workshop Process

We invite our friends, comrades and community members from BIPOC migrant backgrounds to participate in a process oriented workshop with Vicky. Over two days, participants will have a chance to share experiences of displacement and migration with the group, under the guidance of the artist, in a safe and confidential environment. Since this is a challenging topic to work on, especially in the context of public art, we will ensure that participants feel comfortable and safe while sharing. We will also take formal consent from participants whose stories will be represented on the mural.

Workshop Details

Date – Saturday and Sunday, September 2 / 3

Time – 10.30 am – 5 pm (lunch will be provided) 

Location – nGbK, Karl-Liebknecht-Str. 11/13, 10178 Berlin

Maximum Participants - 12

Language – English

Venue – The venue will be under construction during the workshop. It will not be barrier-free and wheelchair-accessible. Escalators and elevators will be available for use.

NOTE: This workshop is exclusively for BIPOC persons with migration and refugee backgrounds.

What to Bring

- Participants are asked to bring one object of personal importance to them, which they can connect to their autobiographies of migration.

- Participants are encouraged to wear comfortable clothing suitable for physical activity and wall painting.

About the Artist

Vicky Shahjehan is a trans/non-binary and self taught artist from Colombo’s Slave Island neighborhood. She is known for her work with henna and uses this medium as a form of archiving stories as well focusing on issues around feminism, gender and freedom. Together with the artist Firi Rahman, she is co-running the community art project #wearefromhere in the diverse community of Slave Island, a movement of breaking the stigma and celebrating the people living there.

Voluntary Mural Painting

The mural will be painted between September 3-10, and we would be happy to invite back the participants to assist the artist on a voluntary basis alongside the House of Kal team to finish the mural for the exhibition. We are able to provide a nominal honorarium to support this.

If you are interested in this process, please contact azizsohailprojects@gmail.com to register for the workshop by September 1, 2023. We look forward to hearing from you!