About this Event
Express Newark’s 2024-2025 annual theme Ritual is a series of exhibitions and events that explore the relationship between Islamic spiritual practices, rituals, and art—featuring experimentations in photography, film, sound art, and textiles. Ritual features work by artists, curators, students, and community members who’ve immersed themselves in nonsecular expressions of spirituality and Islamic traditions across the Muslim world. These works span Newark, which has long been home to one of our nation’s largest African American Muslim communities, while also branching out beyond the domestic borders of the United States to unite members of the global community.
By bridging traditional spiritual practices and aesthetic innovations, these artistic explorations turn towards Muslim interiorities—an often underrepresented perspective in art—to create timely meditations that center art and ritual and inspire new discourses, worldviews, and conversations about belief and identity.
Image: Malick Welli, Forgotten Paradise: Dream the Other Side of the River, 2022, Archival Inkjet, 60x40 inches, courtesy of the artist, Charlotte Brathwaite, and Galerie d'Art L'Atelier 21.
Date and Time
Opening Reception: February 25, 2025
Exhibition On View: February 25 – July 31, 2025
Exhibitions
Powers of the Unseen
In the Paul Robeson Gallery, the exhibition “Powers of the Unseen” features photography works that explore the Muslim concept of the Unseen (al-Ghayb), which refers to that which is hidden from the visible world and beyond human perception. In this exhibit, the theory of the Unseen frames photography by thirteen international artists, including Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Chester Higgins, Gordon Parks, Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and Malick Welli. These artists explore the frontier between the visible and invisible, the intersection of spirituality and photography, and the limits of perception and representation. While many artists have some relationship with Muslim-majority contexts worldwide, their work resists singular labels.
As the exhibit includes European, American, and African artists, it also questions the standard geographies of the "Muslim World." Amidst calls for inclusive representation across spheres of public life, this work challenges us to consider the right to remain hidden. Powers of the Unseen is co-curated by Sandrine Colard, Wendell Marsh, Alex Dika Seggerman, and Aude Tournaye and will be on view until July 31, 2025.
Featured Artists:
Younes Baba- Ali
Yasi Alipour
Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
Charlotte Brathwaite
Nene Aissatou Diallo
Binta Diaw
Bruno Hadjih
Chester Higgins
Amina Kadous
Baseera Khan
Gordon Parks
Kameelah Janan Rasheed
Malick Welli
Woven Prayers, Nzingah Oyo
Photographer Nzingah Oyo is presenting “Woven Prayers,” in which the artist captures large-scale portraits in front of hand-sewn prayer rugs to contemplate the complexities of faith, hope, and connection in a world yearning for meaning. Activating across the entire second floor of Express Newark, Oyo invites members from the local Muslim community to participate in the portrait sessions held in the SHINE Portrait Studio.
Sacred Rugs: Contemplation, Hope, Resilence
Across in the Windows Gallery, “Sacred Rugs: Contemplation, Hope, Resilience” showcases the work of fourteen students who completed the fall 2024 class, “Problems in Contemporary Art: Ritual.” The course, led by Assistant Director of SHINE Portrait Studio, Anthony Alvarez, encouraged Rutgers students to develop critical insights informed by Elsayed’s artistic practice and to design and create new rugs. Together, Alvarez and Elsayed urged students to consider the prayer rug as a medium for contemplation, hope, and resilience, inspiring them to envision aesthetic futures that challenge fear and despair.
Carroussa Sonore, Younes Baba Ali
Express Newark welcomes multimedia artist Younes Baba Ali as its first international Artist-in-Residence. Baba Ali is a Moroccan-born artist based in Brussels who engages the public by mixing technology, objects, sound, video, and photography with political, social, and ecological issues. Throughout his residency, he is developing a two-part installation, “Carroussa Sonore,” which translates to “sounding cart,” that engages those who live and work in Newark. Local artists and students work closely with Baba Ali to create site-specific sound artworks performed throughout Newark neighborhoods by street vendors and performance artists. “Carroussa Sonore” departs from a religious act and becomes an intervention that archives urban soundscapes, abstract noises, and alternative narratives throughout the African Diaspora.
Subtle Centers, Dahlia Elsayed & Andrew Demirjian
“Subtle Centers,” an immersive installation imagined by SHINE Portrait Studio artist-in-residence Dahlia Elsayed, in collaboration with artist Andrew Demirjian. This immersive installation meditates on the permeability between interiorities and exteriorities, prompting visitors to imagine a space between the physical and spiritual worlds collectively. Transforming the Box Gallery into an invented outdoor courtyard featuring mirrored reflection, moving sounds, and tangible objects, the space offers an invitation from the material world for greater comprehension and interpretation of the immaterial.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Express Newark, 54 Halsey Street, Newark, United States
USD 0.00
