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 creative expression—featuring experimentations in photography, film, sound art, and textiles. Ritual spotlights works by artists, curators, students, and community members who have immersed themselves in nonsecular expressions of spirituality and Islamic traditions across the Muslim world. These projects span Newark, which has long been home to one of the 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. 

Ritual features Express Newark’s first international artist-in-residence, Younes Baba-Ali, 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 developed the performance and installation “Carroussa Sonore,” which translates to “sounding cart,” engaging those who live and work in Newark. Originally, the “carroussa” was a makeshift vending cart used by merchants on the streets of Morocco and other North African cities to sell recitals of the Quran or sermons from popular preachers. In this iteration, local artists and students worked 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.

Photographer Nzingah Oyo presents “Woven Prayers,” a series of large-scale portraits staged in front of hand-sewn prayer rugs that contemplate the complexities of faith, hope, and connection in a world yearning for meaning. Activating Express Newark’s Lobby is Oyo’s tapestry of prayer rugs and her images that center members of Newark’s local Muslim community—families, students, and spiritual leaders—to bring greater visibility to their intergenerational practices and legacies. 

On the third floor, “Subtle Centers” is an immersive installation in the Box Gallery imagined by artist Dahlia Elsayed, in collaboration with artist Andrew Demirjian, that meditates on the permeability between interiorities and exteriorities, prompting visitors to imagine a space between the physical and spiritual worlds collectively. 

Across the hall in the Windows Gallery, “Sacred Rugs: Contemplation, Hope, Resilience” showcases the work of fourteen Rutgers-Newark students who, informed by Elsayed’s artistic practice, designed and created new rugs. Taught by Anthony Alvarez, Coordinator of Express Newark’s Free School, alongside  Elsayed, the students considered the prayer rug a medium for contemplation, hope, and resilience, inspiring them to envision aesthetic futures that challenge fear and despair.

In the Paul Robeson Gallery, the exhibition “Powers of the Unseen” features photography that explores the Muslim concept of the Unseen (الغيب or al-ghayb), referring to that which is hidden from the visible world and beyond human perception. Throughout this exhibition, the theory of the Unseen frames photography by thirteen international artists, including Yasi Alipour, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Younes Baba-Ali, Charlotte Brathwaite, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Binta Diaw, Bruno Hadjih, Chester Higgins, Amina Kadous, Baseera Khan, 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. “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. 

To culminate the Ritual series, Express Newark’s Community Media Center (CMC) will host Muslim Voices of Newark. This national community history project supports local Muslim storytellers in creating short documentary films highlighting Muslim experiences and histories of the greater Newark area. In the spring, CMC will premiere film projects by 2024 – 2025 cohort members Kalenah Witcher, Bibi Stewart, and New Freedom Works (Imam MujahidDeen Mohammed, Marsha Nivins Mohammed, and Imam Bilal Hassan). Muslim Voices was founded by the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, designed to highlight and celebrate the presence, history, contributions, and challenges of African American Muslims in America. 

Ritual is organized by Executive Director, Salamishah Tillet; Creative Director, Nick Kline; and Associate Curator and Program Director, Alliyah Allen. Anonda Bell, Director of the Paul Robeson Galleries; Anthony Alvarez, Associate Director of Shine Portrait Studio; and Yvonne Shirley and Yucef Mayes of the Community Media Center provided additional support.

Rutgers University—Newark, the Andy Warhol Foundation, and The Devils Youth Foundation generously funded this exhibition. Additional support was provided by the Ford Foundation and the following Express Newark studios: New Arts Justice, Shine Portrait Studio, Paul Robeson Galleries, and the Community Media Center.

Image: Malick Welli, in collaboration with Charlotte Brathwaite, Forgotten Paradise #2, from the series Dream the Other Side of the River