March 7 – 9, 2025
Pop-up Exhibition & Art Market
Cowell Theater, Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture
ARTogether, in partnership with Opera Parallèle’s “The Pigeon Keeper,” presents an exhibition featuring Bay Area refugee and immigrant artists weaving stories of belonging and resilience. This show is a reflection on the transformative power of compassion and shared humanity, in conversation with “The Pigeon Keeper,” a modern fable of kindness in a fractured world.
Exhibiting Artists
Eva Agus (b. 1978 Jakarta, Indonesia) is an artist and environmental engineer working in Oakland, California. Eva explores themes of ecosystem harmony, migration experience, and fragility of life in her art practice. She blends a modern high-precision feel of her technical training with cultural elements from Indonesia and the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia. Eva holds a doctorate in Civil & Environmental Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley and serves on the de Young Museum Flower Committee in San Francisco.
Dalar Alahverdi is a contemporary visual artist of Armenian descent living in California. Growing up in Iran as a woman in a minority group, she developed a deep appreciation for social justice and freedom. Her work explores untold human stories through social, cultural, and political lenses. Using metaphor, her paintings reveal deeper narratives beyond their first impression. Dalar holds a BA in Painting from Tehran University, an MA from Yerevan State Academy of Fine Arts, and a second MA in Art Education from California State University, Long Beach. She exhibits internationally and teaches art in the San Francisco Bay Area.
ARTogether Afghan Women Group, the Tekah Tekah Project, led by Afghan American artist Gazelle Samizay and Iranian artist Katayoun Bahrami was a community textile art project designed to connect Afghan and Mensa artists with women from the Afghan refugee community to explore creative art forms such as embroidery, textile painting, cyanotypes, quilt-making, and visual storytelling.
ARTogether Shadow Movements youth cohort will be exhibiting their animated film “The Alchemy of Home.” Lead Artist Sabina Shanti Kariat (she/they) is an Indian-American community worker, animator, artist, and filmmaker based in San Francisco. She creates animations for documentary films about diaspora narratives and fights for liberation and human rights. Sabina has been a teaching artist throughout San Francisco, and has led co-creation workshops in the Bay, in rural Jharkhand India, and in Istanbul and Reyhanli, Turkey where she completed her Fulbright Research Fellowship about representing diasporic identities through traditional puppetry.
Nimisha Doongarwal is an Indian immigrant and sociopolitical artist. She moved to the US for education in science but in 2014 decided to study art history and psychology at Stanford, followed by an MFA at Academy of Arts University. Nimisha’s work is inspired by her surroundings and finding identity as a global-citizen. Her work has been featured in many publications and magazines including Forbes, Suboart, Maake, and Artmarket magazine. She exhibited at 80+ group and solo exhibits including the DeYoung Museum, SF International Airport, UCSF Hospital, San Mateo City Hall and Library, MONCA. She painted public art, San Francisco’s iconic Hearts sculpture.
Sarah Espinosa, Shooting Within was founded in hopes to inspire others to notice their pockets of joy within the storms of life. When Sarah thinks about what makes photography so special for her, it’s the ability to revisit memories she would have otherwise forgotten. It reminds her of who she was, where she has been, and the people she was lucky enough to share them with. By capturing snapshots of a life lived, she aspires to not only highlight the aesthetically pleasing moments but to also honor the full spectrum of what life has to offer—flaws and all.
Abdul Hakim Karimzada, born in 1972 in Afghanistan, is a master calligrapher, who has over 30 years experience in different types of calligraphy and fine writing such as traditional and modern scripts. He started calligraphy in Herat Province of Afghanistan by learning different writing styles including Nastaliq, Kofie, Naskh and Thuluth scripts. He went on to create over thousands of works by using these scripts. He is the senior member of Herat Calligraphy Association’s board and also the trainer of calligraphy for this association.
Sunroop Kaur (b. 1997, Calgary, AB) holds a BFA in Visual Arts from Emily Carr University of Art + Design (2019). Kaur is an interdisciplinary artist currently working in the Bay Area. Her practice employs Eastern + Western iconography to decontextualize cultural materials, and create spaces that reclaim/subvert South Asian narratives. The use of mediums such as textile/embroidery allows her work to serve as a distillation of familial and community history— through which she counteracts the legacies of colonial violence and theft. She hopes her work is a restorative force that can facilitate reconciliation and healing for her community.
Hargun Mahal Mann is an artist born in India, currently residing in California with her husband and two kids. Watercolor, ink are her mediums of choice. Drawing from her multinational background and personal history as an immigrant, her work focuses on the myths surrounding women, migration and home.. She has BFA and MFA degrees in Graphic design from Chandigarh College Of Fine Art, Punjab University in India.
Arina Sarwari Stadnyk (any pronouns) is an Afghan-Ukrainian illustrator, linocut printmaker, and writer. Arina was born in Kharkiv and currently lives on unceded Ohlone Lisjan land. She aspires to create work that uplifts queer and refugee ancestry. Her drawings, linocut prints, poems, and lyrical essays celebrate diasporic memory and intergenerational joy. You can find more of her creations on instagram at @absurdistan__
Ujjayini Sikha, an Indian immigrant, is a painter-filmmaker, who calls the Bay area home now. After working for more than a decade in the tech industry Ujjayini switched careers towards art and attended the now closed San Francisco Art Institute for her MFA studies. Like the hyphenated existences she embodies, her art traverses geographies and cultures, that on the face of it may seem removed and divergent, but they all chart and interpret our shared human experience. Drawn to the feminine – form, existence and consciousness – untold stories of women are often a central theme in her works that show the strength in women along with their triumphs and tribulations.
Jun Yang (b. Seoul, South Korea) is a self-taught artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, murals, and textile sculptures. Their work draws on personal experiences of trauma, migration, grief, and the Queer immigrant experience, exploring themes of identity, belonging, and healing. Having lived in Ireland, Belgium, and France before settling in San Francisco, Jun’s art reflects both the dislocation and resilience of their journey. Jun’s work engages with activism, advocating for LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights, while celebrating the solidarity they have found in San Francisco.
Romina Zabihian is an Iranian visual designer and artist based in San Francisco. Her background in psychology, along with her firsthand experiences of discrimination as a woman and her observations of the struggles faced by minorities, deeply inform her work. She explores themes of identity, complex emotions, resilience, justice, and unity, using various techniques and mediums to tell stories of connection. She adapts her visual language and materials to each project, allowing the narrative to shape the form and medium.
