Artist, Ohio State researcher join forces to tell stories of new Americans through art

Hamida Ouali pointed at a painting of herself wearing a green dress that is traditional among the Amazigh, the North African ethnic group to which she belongs, and made a decision.

"I like it," she said. 

Her image stared out from the canvas with quiet confidence.

“It’s — how to say? — not a normal look. I look like I have a long future and many things I still need to realize.”

The 42-year-old, who lives on the Northwest Side, and came from Algeria in 2019, recently was examining the nearly complete portrait by Kirsta Niemie Benedetti in the latter's studio, inside a historic warehouse in Franklinton.

The work will be part of Benedetti's latest show, "The Whole Picture," featuring portraits of seven new American women, accompanied by installations of objects that they brought with them to the United States.

The free show will be part of a collective exhibit called "Tapestry: Narrating a New Thread" at Ohio State University's Urban Arts Space Downtown Aug. 4-27. 

How the art project began

Benedetti's work is a collaboration with Mary Rodriguez, an associate professor at Ohio State University, who took part in the creative process as part of her research about identity formation among immigrants in central Ohio.

Benedetti, 38, and Rodriguez, 36, say they want to help immigrant and refugee women share their stories with their Ohio neighbors — on their own terms.  

“Portraiture has the power to connect people in very unique ways that different types of art don’t,” Rodriguez said. “We want people drawn to these women and wanting to know their stories, so maybe the next time they see someone on the street with a hijab or other traditional garb, they’ll smile at them and make them feel more welcome.”

Benedetti, a graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design, met the subjects of her paintings through her previous career as a social worker.

In 2015, Benedetti and her family were living in Riverview, a neighborhood tucked behind the Ohio State campus where many new immigrants from North Africa and Bangladesh reside. In her spare time, Benedetti began helping some of her neighbors drive to doctors’ appointments, apply for government benefits and sort through bills. 

Noticing the obstacles they faced in adjusting to life in America inspired her to found the nonprofit Riverview International Center, which today offers a variety of services, including English classes, employment services and legal help for immigrants and refugees.

One portrait subject, Tania Akther, 35, of Dublin, who came from Bangladesh seven years ago, was a client at the center, and Ouali works as its community care advocate. Two other subjects of the portrait show — Yamuna Adhikari, a Nepali American who lives in Gahanna, and Madina Pemba, a Somali American who lives in Arizona — were interns at the organization.

When Benedetti left the nonprofit to care for a family member last year, she began thinking about ways to combine social work with her long-held passion for art. She had been troubled by the way some nonprofits use their clients’ “tear-jerker” stories and photographs for fundraising — a practice that she said “borders on exploitation.”

She wanted to flip the dynamic on its head.

“Portraiture can be used as a way of honoring people,” Benedetti said. “It’s not just stories based on the worst tragedy of the war that they left or the economic downfall of their country. It’s their hopes and dreams and their identity and who they are as individuals.”

Benedetti met Rodriguez, who teaches at Ohio State’s College of Food, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences but considers herself a “social scientist at heart,” in 2019. The daughter of immigrants from Colombia and Nicaragua, Rodriguez was interested in combining her academic research about identity formation with Benedetti’s art to produce academically-informed work that was accessible to the public.

Creating the works of art

The two began by recording interviews with each of the portrait subjects. Questions ranged from the formal to the abstract: How do you overcome difficulty? What is your biggest accomplishment? What does happiness smell like to you?

Next, participants chose still shots from the videos for the painted portraits, and they selected meaningful objects to be displayed alongside the paintings.

For her installation, Ouali included clothing and jewelry from her Amazigh ethnic group. She also included an olive branch, which she said symbolizes the strength of her community: In Algeria, whole villages would work together to harvest the olive crop communally.

In Akther’s portrait, she smiles hopefully at the viewer, with a geometric design in the background that Benedetti adapted from a copy of the Quran. Akther said that, initially, the notion of posing for a portrait seemed too individualistic, but she eventually came around to it.

“(My identity is) not only me. It’s God, and my mom and dad, and my family also,” she said.

Akther now works at Sam’s Club and helps run a female-led sewing business, but she maintains close contact with her parents in Bangladesh. Among the objects she included in her installation is a handwritten list of phone numbers for family members back home.

Rodriguez said the show is intended for a general audience, though it holds lessons for organizations and policymakers who work with new Americans.

“(The project) changes the narrative of ‘They are without, they are in need.’ Instead, it is, ‘They have strengths, and this is who they are,’” she said. “Let’s leverage and support those strengths to help them better their own households.”

Benedetti said she wants to upend the notion that a painted portrait is only for the wealthiest or most prestigious individuals.

When she was installing another set of portraits of a new American woman at John Glenn Columbus International Airport recently, she said travelers kept asking her, “Should I know this person?”

“What they were getting at, was, ‘Are they famous?'” Benedetti said.  “One woman said, ‘That’s a lot of faces for someone who’s not famous.’ And I was like, ‘Exactly.’”

Peter Gill covers immigration and new American communities for the Dispatch in partnership with Report for America. You can support work like his with a tax-deductible donation to Report for America here:bit.ly/3fNsGaZ. Contact Peter atpgill@dispatch.com or follow him on Twittter:@pitaarji

At a glance

"The Whole Picture" will run Aug. 4-27 at OSU Urban Arts Space, 50 W. Town St., Suite 130. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays; until 8 p.m. Thursdays. Call 614-292-8861 or visit www.uas.osu.edu. A reception will take place at 6 p.m. Aug. 6.