Saba Maheen

A selection of poems by Refaat Alareer and Khaliifa ibn Raymond Daniel AKA Marcellus Williams is a soft book of etched leather pages I made with the aid of a laser cutter, and adorned with Palestinian tatreez. Inspired continually by the print ephemera that has arisen out of this moment, I came across Alareer’s words, as a famous Palestinian poet, around the time of his devastating murder in December of 2023; his poem is often excerpted by the intifada in times of hardship: If I must die, you must live to tell my story.

Then, in September of this year- a very difficult newsweek highlighted the entanglement between Israel-U.S. fascism, both in the Palestinian genocide and stateside: the pager and walkie-talkie explosions in Lebanon, the $2.90 NY subway shooting, Matt Nelson’s self-immolation, and the wrongful execution of Marcellus “Khaliifa” Williams by the state of Missouri. In Brother Khaliifa’s time as a wrongly incarcerated individual for 24 years, he began following Islam, became an imam, and served as a mentor for his peers; he also wrote poems, having written The perplexing smiles of the children of Palestine, highlighting their plight, while in his own situation. His last poem while on death row, At last, another’s heartbeat, and his last written words, “All praise be to Allah in every situation!!!” marks his detachment from and empathy to this dunya - mortal life, and this ummah - Muslims in the world.

I regard all of this stimulus and response as “imperial debris.” How much more violence can and will occur before we understand that we are not only approaching the downfall but are deep in it? There is no doubt that the forced, non-consensual activities within an inescapable imperialist, capitalist system - policing, censorship, state-sponsored violence - make us feel hopeless, directionless, and angry without accessible, meaningful reprieve. My goals for this poem book and in my practice revolve around this question: How might I be able to spiritually engage an audience, to create self awareness and consideration amongst severely fractured communities, big and small?

Saba Maheen (b.1997 Lawrenceville, GA) is a female, queer, Muslim, Bengali-American, multimodal maker and thinker working with image, reproduction, and participation. Utilizing multi-medic forms, there is a porosity in the goals of her work: In the wake of the viral-ized Palestinian genocide, Maheen urges her audience to return to a radical, collective humanity for one another, and to understand “here and there-ness” of inter solidarity liberation. More specifically, analyzing the diminishing rate of attention in response to short-form media, she believes it is imperative to combat the flattening, desensitizing effect that social media has beyond the screen. She considers portals that break down the dichotomy between print-digital, time-space, and human-computer. Her work tends toward repetition, multiples, editions, versions, iterations, units, modules, and collections, and is fabricated often through the most accessible and efficient means. What objects and systems can we influence to prevent a speculatively dark future?

Saba Maheen received a B.A. in Studio Art, Human Centered Design and Arabic Language from Dartmouth College (2020). Shooting internationally as a film photographer in the years following the pandemic, she is now completing her MFA in Design at Mason Gross School of Art at Rutgers University.