Arts & Entertainment
Pots and plans
Local artist has exhibit at MOVA
Sabri Ben-Achour
Ceramic Artist
‘Canvas and Clay: A Summer Art Exhibition’
Through Aug. 15
MOVA Lounge
12 14th Street, NW
Sabri Ben-Achour at MOVA with his current exhibition. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Sabri Ben-Achour was 12 when he took his first pottery lesson. His mother signed him up for a class at a local studio in Columbia, Mo., where his family lived at the time. With little interruption, he has been creating works from clay ever since.
“I’ve always liked the tactile aspect of potting and ceramics,” Ben-Achour says. “The way you have to listen to the clay through your fingers and manipulate it and how it circuits through mind, body and imagination. It’s like music.”
Ben-Achour’s father is Tunisian. His mother is from New Zealand. He was born in France and grew up in Tunisia and Missouri before moving to suburban Northern Virginia in his teens. And though he sometimes decorates a bowl or vase with Arabic calligraphy, he seldom plumbs his background for inspiration. His chosen aesthetic is Asian.
Like traditional Japanese ceramists, Ben-Achour strives to create mostly functional pottery in earth tones and earth textures with a sort of calculated simplicity, aiming to capture the organic nature of the clay and other materials. His quietly beautiful works include pod and shell-shaped stoneware pieces; rounded Raku (a type of low-fire pottery) slate-gray vases with crackled surfaces and wonderfully unusual hexagonal, metal-colored honeycomb bowls. He also makes teapots.
A selection of Ben-Achour’s work can be seen at MOVA Lounge where he and fellow D.C.-based artist Kreg D. Kelly are the subjects of a joint exhibition called “Canvas and Clay” through mid-August. Both artists are gay.
“I’ve shown in galleries,” Ben-Achour says, “but showing at MOVA is more about my friends seeing my work. It’s lets them know what I’ve been up to.”
“If I’m not showing a piece, it’s at home and I’m using it,” he says. “Ever since my first lesson, it’s been drilled into me that pottery must have a function. There is Japanese pottery dating back 12,000 years and it always had a use. No matter how non-functional or purely decorative something I’ve made may appear to be, I can always find a use for it.”
One of Ben-Achour’s pieces. (Blade photo by Michael Key)
Ben-Achour credits much of his artistic development to his mentor Jill Hinckley, a well-known Asian-influenced ceramicist and proprietor of Hinckley Pottery in Adams Morgan. Over the years, Ben-Achour has progressed from Hinckley student to instructor. He describes his Wednesday evening classes as relaxing:
“We drink wine, engage in casual conversation and make things. Pottery is great for everyone as long as you don’t have high expectations immediately. Everyone is bad at first. And for me, it’s great — teaching makes you a better potter.”
When not making pots, Sabri (who received his master’s in foreign service from Georgetown University in 2006) works as a reporter for WAMU 88.5- American University Radio. He freelances for National Public Radio and when he can, takes on reporting projects in places like Haiti and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
In what little free time remains, he also paints and makes music on his computer. And while his paintings hang on his parents’ home in Great Falls, he says he’d never dare let anyone hear his music.
Looking ahead, Ben-Achour wants to explore geographic shapes and new organic textures. His goal is to incorporate lights and living growths into his ceramic work — plants, mosses, ocean life — and glaze them with the ocean. “Other people have done similar things,” he says, “but maybe not exactly the same as what I’ve got in mind.”
Team DC, the umbrella organization for LGBTQ-friendly sports teams and leagues in the D.C. area, held its annual Night of Champions Awards Gala on Saturday, April 20 at the Hilton National Mall. The organization gave out scholarships to area LGBTQ student athletes as well as awards to the Different Drummers, Kelly Laczko of Duplex Diner, Stacy Smith of the Edmund Burke School, Bryan Frank of Triout, JC Adams of DCG Basketball and the DC Gay Flag Football League.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
The 2024 National Cannabis Festival was held at the Fields at RFK Stadium on April 19-20.
(Washington Blade photos by Michael Key)
Covering the @NatlCannaFest at RFK Stadium for @WashBlade . Stop by the LGBTQ+ booth and pick up a paper if you are here. pic.twitter.com/is7hnsaPns
— Michael Patrick Key (@MichaelKeyWB) April 20, 2024
Theater
‘Amm(i)gone’ explores family, queerness, and faith
A ‘fully autobiographical’ work from out artist Adil Mansoor
‘Amm(i)gone’
Thorough May 12
Woolly Mammoth Theatre
641 D St., N.W.
$60-$70
Woollymammoth.net
“Fully and utterly autobiographical.” That’s how Adil Mansoor describes “Amm(i)gone,” his one-man work currently playing at Woolly Mammoth Theatre.
Both created and performed by out artist Mansoor, it’s his story about inviting his Pakistani mother to translate Sophocles’s Greek tragedy “Antigone” into Urdu. Throughout the journey, there’s an exploration of family, queerness, and faith,as well as references to teachings from the Quran, and audio conversations with his Muslim mother.
Mansoor, 38, grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and is now based in Pittsburgh where he’s a busy theater maker. He’s also the founding member of Pittsburgh’s Hatch Arts Collective and the former artistic director of Dreams of Hope, an LGBTQ youth arts organization.
WASHINGTON BLADE: What spurred you to create “Amm(i)gone”?
ADIL MANSOOR: I was reading a translation of “Antigone” a few years back and found myself emotionally overwhelmed. A Theban princess buries her brother knowing it will cost her, her own life. It’s about a person for whom all aspirations are in the afterlife. And what does that do to the living when all of your hopes and dreams have to be reserved for the afterlife?
I found grant funding to pay my mom to do the translation. I wanted to engage in learning. I wanted to share theater but especially this ancient tragedy. My mother appreciated the characters were struggling between loving one another and their beliefs.
BLADE: Are you more director than actor?
MANSOOR: I’m primarily a director with an MFA in directing from Carnegie Mellon. I wrote, directed, and performed in this show, and had been working on it for four years. I’ve done different versions including Zoom. Woolly’s is a new production with the same team who’ve been involved since the beginning.
I love solo performance. I’ve produced and now teach solo performance and believe in its power. And I definitely lean toward “performance” and I haven’t “acted” since I was in college. I feel good on stage. I was a tour guide and do a lot of public speaking. I enjoy the attention.
BLADE: Describe your mom.
MANSOOR: My mom is a wonderfully devout Muslim, single mother, social worker who discovered my queerness on Google. And she prays for me.
She and I are similar, the way we look at things, the way we laugh. But different too. And those are among the questions I ask in this show. Our relationship is both beautiful and complicated.
BLADE: So, you weren’t exactly hiding your sexuality?
MANSOOR: In my mid-20s, I took time to talk with friends about our being queer with relation to our careers. My sexuality is essential to the work. As the artistic director at Dreams of Hope, part of the work was to model what it means to be public. If I’m in a room with queer and trans teenagers, part of what I’m doing is modeling queer adulthood. The way they see me in the world is part of what I’m putting out there. And I want that to be expansive and full.
So much of my work involves fundraising and being a face in schools. Being out is about making safe space for queer young folks.
BLADE: Have you encountered much Islamophobia?
MANSOOR: When 9/11 happened, I was a sophomore in high school, so yes. I faced a lot then and now. I’ve been egged on the street in the last four months. I see it in the classroom. It shows up in all sorts of ways.
BLADE: What prompted you to lead your creative life in Pittsburgh?
MANSOOR: I’ve been here for 14 years. I breathe with ease in Pittsburgh. The hills and the valleys and the rust of the city do something to me. It’s beautiful, it’ affordable, and there is support for local artists. There’s a lot of opportunity.
Still, the plan was to move to New York in September of 2020 but that was cancelled. Then the pandemic showed me that I could live in Pittsburgh and still have a nationally viable career.
BLADE: What are you trying to achieve with “Amm(i)gone”?
MANSOOR: What I’m sharing in the show is so very specific but I hear people from other backgrounds say I totally see my mom in that. My partner is Catholic and we share so much in relation to this.
I hope the work is embracing the fullness of queerness and how means so many things. And I hope the show makes audiences want to call their parents or squeeze their partners.
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