Mohannad Ghawanmeh is drawing on his Arab-American Muslim background as he serves as the first POC President and Executive Director of Public Art St. Paul, an organization whose principal interest is the creation of public art.
Ghawanmeh was born in Palestine; his family immigrated to Minnesota when he was 17. He says his ethnic status helps position PASP closer to the interests and concerns of underrepresented communities.
“It's one thing to show concern for people who've just moved to the United States, the challenges that they will be facing, in terms of a social network that lends you access to opportunities, but it's another to hire somebody who's likely gone through those experiences as I have. I know what it's like to be on the outside. I still feel like I'm on the outside.”
Ghawanmeh’s background is in film. The aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9-11, and the cultural backlash against Arab Americans inspired him to pursue work in community engagement. He and a friend organized the first edition of the Twin Cities Arab Film Festival in 2003; he served as its administrator before becoming its curator and director.
Ghawanmeh says that it’s important for PASP’s vision to reflect the diversity of the community. That’s what resulted in the creation of the Wakpa Triennial Art Festival in 2023. The festival is a multi-site exhibition of public space artwork, majority of them created by artists of color in the Twin Cities. The triennial serves as a platform for uplifting BIPOC artists, art forms and art traditions of communities of color in the city.
Ghawanmeh says he especially wants to dedicate the triennial to the Dakota people. Because of his Palestinian-American background, he says he feels a strong connection to the Dakota people, who were expelled from Minnesota and dispersed across North America.
“This is an experience of my people and my own parents. And, that's certainly a motivating factor for me in terms of shepherding Wakpa into the future.”
Ghawanmeh highlights Public Art St. Paul’s work reflects the community’s diversity in its public artwork. For example, PASP’s sidewalk poetry program, which imprints poems by St. Paul residents in concrete on city sidewalks, has moved from being exclusively an English project to include poems in Spanish, Hmong, Dakota and Somali.
“We recognize that poetry is not exclusive to the English language, but is a tradition in probably tens of languages, taking on all kinds of different forms and different discourses. I would say that that's a representation of our organization's interest in embracing non European arts traditions.”
Ghawanmeh says he wants to encourage Twin Cities residents to expand their worldview through local arts and culture. He says taking even small actions to challenge and enrich oneself can be highly rewarding.
(This story was reported as part of the Center for Broadcast Journalism's Summer Journalism Intensive, a training program for young aspiring reporters from diverse communities.)
Comments