Articles

CONTENT | Issue 7

An Interview with Nadia Janjua of Muslim Women in the Arts (MWIA)

MUSLIM WOMEN IN THE ARTS (MWIA)

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The best terms to describe Nadia Janjua are dynamic and community-oriented. The underlying intention of all her work, whether as an artist, architect, or community organizer, is to build and consolidate a sense of community, amongst Muslims but also across ethnic, cultural and religious boundaries. It is this same spirit that animates, for example, her trip to Pakistan to help flood affected communities design and build adobe homes, her simple architectural design for an Islamic school, or still yet a painting such as ‘Of the Earth’, a watercolour testimony of her spiritual journey to Mecca to make hajj.

Hello (wa assalamu alaikum) Nadia. You are now coordinator of Muslim Women in the Arts (MWIA) but you are also a practicing Muslim-American architect and artist. Could you say a few words about your own practice before we discuss MWIA specifically?

Wa alaikum salaam Valerie! I work under the business name “NJARTitecture,” which encompasses my commissioned work in the fields of both art and architecture. I have been painting for fifteen years, have had numerous works commissioned by private clients and art collectors, and I contribute annually to charitable events, usually fundraising for the rebuilding of communities destroyed by natural or manmade disasters. This is also my broad focus with architecture – disaster relief architecture, but in the United States I am an independent subcontractor working with Design-build firms. In this type of work, I’m a part of every step of the process; as I often describe it to people – my hands are in the dirt, all the way up to meeting with clients and helping them find their design vision.

In this article you will also find a gallery display of three selected members:
Lateefa Spiker,
Nama Khalil and
Tahsin Dhirani.

The rest of the article you can read in the magazine.