mai eltahir
DVAA 2023 Kathryn Pannepacker Fellow
About Mai:
mai eltahir is a curator and cultural worker based in Philadelphia, PA by way of Flint, MI. mai is interested in the poetics and diffusion of contradictions placed within the same container (between past and present, reality and fiction, life and death, ending and beginnings) just as it evinces the opaqueness of blackness.
By asking what intimacies of existence and collective struggle impede and make possible, her work proposes dynamic wandering and gathering scenes of encounter. mai’s practice attempts to compile voices and practices that complicate colonial meanings of endings, existence, and yearning.
About the Kathryn Pannepacker Fellowship:
This fellowship provides an opportunity for an emerging artist/curator to curate an exhibition exploring social, political, or cultural content that engages local communities in the Da Vinci Art Alliance gallery space. By spearheading the exhibition process including theme creation, artist management, and ultimate layout and presentation, the Kathryn Pannepacker Fellow is able to develop and enhance their skill set. The Kathryn Pannepacker Fellow will work alongside DVAA's Exhibitions and Programming Director to oversee, advise, and install the exhibition.
Named for textile/visual/community artist Kathryn Pannepacker who revitalized DVAA in 1997 and who continues to work deeply with local communities around criminal justice, homelessness, substance abuse and other mental/behavioral health challenges.