ARTISTS TO KNOW: MARWA ELTAHIR
Photography: Avery Savage; Creative Direction & Production: Bianca Jean-Pierre & Avery Savage
As part of our ongoing collaboration with The Shed to spotlight artists from the Open Call: Portals exhibition (June 27–August 24), SHEER spent time inside the immersive installation of visual artist, writer, and producer Marwa Eltahir: 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied To Yours.
Rooted in the grief of personal loss and political displacement, the work emerged after Marwa’s family was forced to flee their home in Omdurman, Sudan, amidst the 2023 war. In the aftermath of multiple global atrocities, Marwa found herself writing through heartbreak—turning sorrow into a spiritual offering.
Her installation creates a sacred, sensory space for reflection. Modeled after majlis-style communal seating found along sub-Saharan caravan routes, the work invites audiences to rest on woven rugs beneath sheer white curtains, surrounded by sound, stillness, and prayer. A projected film plays in a loop, opening with the Azan and unfolding into spoken word narration and original composition.
Here, Marwa explores the interconnectedness of liberation and lineage, the spiritual labor of remembrance, and the ritual act of storytelling as survival. Her Sudanese heritage, queer Black Muslim identity, and devotion to ancestral guidance inform every part of her creative practice.
This feature is part of a broader look into how emerging artists across New York City are creating new portals for resistance, restoration, and reimagining. Below, Marwa reflects on grief, home, prayer, and the collective future she hopes we can build together.
Marwa Eltahir interviewed by Bianca Jean-Pierre and photographed by Avery Savage for SHEER.
SHEER: Your film 99 Names: My Liberation Is Tied To Yours holds space for grief, remembrance, and connection. What personal or collective memories brought this work to life, and how did you know it was the right moment to create it?
Marwa Eltahir: The original script for 99 Names was written in 2023 — after the war in Sudan reached the North on April 15. My hometown of Omdurman was attacked by RSF forces and my family was forced to evacuate my grandmother’s home and seek refuge in neighboring countries. Later the same year, on October 7, the IDF executed a brutal attack on Gaza. Sitting with the weight of insurmountable grief, sorrow and loss — in my family, my childhood home and the indigenous land of my ancestors — felt crushing to every piece of my spirit. Most days I would wake up thinking I just dreamt up the most cruel nightmare, only to realize that this is my current reality. At the time I was living in New Orleans, in a writing sabbatical, and I had the spaciousness to sit with the pit of despair flowering within me, to cradle my tears and meet my grief with rest. Writing has always been a safe space I create for myself, and this was no different. I wrote and published a piece every Monday for a year and a half until I could recognize myself within the chaos of the destruction around me. 99 Names was born from this container and I am grateful to have the space, courage, and time to shift my pain into a cathartic, communal experience.
SHEER: The installation invites a sense of stillness and sacred gathering. What inspired the majlis-style seating, use of sheer white curtains, and the musical score you chose? How do these choices shape the emotional or spiritual experience for viewers?
Marwa: Historically, in Sudan and other cities within the caravan route in sub-Saharan Africa, nomads would travel long hours each day and rest in the evenings in preparation for the next day of travel. They would feed their camels, drink herbal teas, and gather seated, lounging on the floor sharing oral stories of their travels, their trades and their personal experiences. I wanted to emulate this majlis-style community seating, which often feels to me as one of the first organic spaces for oral storytelling.
The musical story that accompanies the script was created by Israa Shalaby. I am grateful for her collaboration because music shares a deep connection with ceremonial work. Spiritual teachers often incorporate singing into rituals as a way to connect with the divine, using the breath in singing is a way to communicate with the world of the unseen. We chose to include the drums, synth, and chimes to punctuate the story arc of the script. I was also fortunate to invite Tanais into the work and include their voice as the opening sequence, call to prayer. These elements were mixed and mastered by Chris Sholar.
The installation portion of the work draws on imagery you would find in a Sudanese home — woven rugs and textiles, floor cushions, white fabrics, prayer mats.
All of these elements combined bring a sensorial depth to the work that seeks to invite audiences into a space of embodied meditation, where the audio-visual piece can be experienced in a loop, a meditation to center the body and the spirit. In doing so, the work aims to allow audiences to grapple with the collective grief we are navigating as we bear witness to unspeakable violence against Black and brown Muslim bodies.
“I wrote and published a piece every Monday for a year and a half until I could recognize myself within the chaos of the destruction around me. 99 Names was born from this container and I am grateful to have the space, courage, and time to shift my pain into a cathartic, communal experience.”
SHEER: Islamic imagery and memories rooted in the Sudanese diaspora are woven throughout the piece, especially through the Azan and the 99 names of Allah. How has your relationship with spiritual practice, devotional ritual, and ancestral tradition informed your creative process?
Marwa: For me, art practice and spiritual practice cannot be separated because the two inform one another. My artwork is an external expression of the internal work I steward with spirit, with ancestors, with Allah in my private ceremonies. I feel the most free when I am in prayer, it is from this place of wonder and possibility that my artwork is born. When I am in flow state, it often feels as though spirit is working through me to see itself reflected in our 3D world. I like to believe that any piece of work I share is co-created with my ancestors guiding the process. Through this perspective, I allow myself to surrender to what wants to come out from my body and onto the page. Before I begin writing, I light a candle, burn incense, tend to my altar, and ask for support in the process, so I may get out of my own way and free myself from the voice of judgment that can often impede the creative process. After the work is shared, I find that it takes on a spirit of its own and shows me where it wants to go, and who it wants to be witnessed by.
“The installation portion of the work draws on imagery you would find in a Sudanese home — woven rugs and textiles, floor cushions, white fabrics, prayer mats.”
SHEER: Your work often holds the weight of both personal and political grief. How has art helped you navigate mourning—especially in the face of systemic violence—and what helps you stay grounded while carrying that emotional weight?
Marwa: I am grateful to have cultivated a six year meditation practice that grounds me as I navigate the contradictions of this time and work. The personal is political, and this belief permeates my art practice. Since my work is deeply personal, it also speaks to the political identities that I carry as a queer, Black Muslim woman.
The stories I choose to tell are mined from my memories, dreams, and messages channeled from ancestors. In this way, I honor the legacy of my lineage, especially the women who came before me and paved the road for me to walk on.
I’ve learned from my teachers that, wherever you go, there you are. My artwork serves as a point of reflection, a mirror for what I am experiencing within my body in this political moment. In sharing my lens, I hope to inform the archive that will document the fall of empire in Sudan and the impact across its diaspora.
SHEER: Across your practice, you move through many identities: writer, producer, visual artist, Sudanese, queer, Muslim. How do these intersecting parts of you inform the stories you choose to tell and the ways you tell them?
Marwa: As a multi-disciplinary artist I’ve learned that this work requires my full self — all of the contradictions, labels, memories, and identities that I carry in my body. Embracing my intersectionality has taught me that I don’t need to compartmentalize my identity nor my work. Following this path has given me the fluidity and freedom to explore different mediums including auditory, written, visual and performance. It feels like I’m just at the start of this complex journey and I am eager to continue discovering the new parts of myself that now have room to grow.
SHEER: You work across many disciplines, including writing, filmmaking, and production. How do you think about storytelling as a tool for transformation, and what connects these different mediums within your larger creative practice?
Marwa: The different mediums I work within often speak to one another, and help amplify different parts of my storytelling practice. A few years ago I started a practice of reading my written work out loud, I found that the voice cannot lie. While sometimes as a writer I can create a distance between myself and what I am writing about, when these words are spoken out loud there is an intimacy between the language and the feeling in the body. The voice cracks, aches, gets louder or softer in response to its material, it betrays the truth. This led me to a deeper curiosity with auditory work, which then turned into a practice that is collective, through live performance. When the words are spoken out loud to an audience in real time, there is an energy in the room alchemized between the work and the viewer. You can see how bodies shift or react to different parts, what sits with them, makes them laugh, makes them cringe — this is a sacred space, where the work comes alive and becomes a container through which to connect. Liberation is intrinsically a communal effort, achieved through the knowledge that we are one, all connected through the threads of our stories, our spirits. As Gwendolyn Brooks puts it, “We are each other’s harvest; we are each other’s business; we are each other’s magnitude and bond.”
“I feel the most free when I am in prayer, it is from this place of wonder and possibility that my artwork is born. When I am in flow state, it often feels as though spirit is working through me to see itself reflected in our 3D world.”
SHEER: Through Our Political Home, you are building an intentional space for trans and queer African storytellers. What does it mean to center community care in your practice, and how do you create room for both resistance and rest in the work you do?
Marwa: In 1995 my family immigrated from Sudan and brought with them centuries-old traditions, oral histories, and the accompanying ancestral wisdom that teaches us we are all connected. It is here that I first learned the practices of community organizing such as mutual aid, asset mapping, strategic planning, and mobilizing to care for your neighbor, especially when the systems surrounding us were not designed with our culture in mind.
Our Political Home borrows from these early lessons to commune trans & queer storytellers from across the African diaspora whose stories have been historically erased. By providing storytellers with resources, spaces, and communities to share their stories, OPH hopes to center narratives that challenge the hegemony of colonial power structures. Individual liberation is strengthened and determined by our ability to lean into mutual and interdependent communities of care. In the words of Fannie Lou Hamer, “None of us are free until we are all free.” Creating a reality that reflects our intersectional narratives will require an informed understanding of indigenous knowledge, access to ancestral wisdom, and deep connection to the land. OPH aims to serve as the genesis for renewed commitments to placemaking, legacy building, and imaginative, creative futures grounded in sacred notions of home.
“The stories I choose to tell are mined from my memories, dreams, and messages channeled from ancestors. In this way, I honor the legacy of my lineage, especially the women who came before me and paved the road for me to walk on.”
SHEER: The theme of Open Call: Portals aligns closely with your exploration of identity, place, and memory. What does the idea of a portal mean to you, and what kind of shift or reflection do you hope people experience through 99 Names?
Marwa: A portal is a doorway, a threshold between what was and what is, it is an opening. My first film is titled Practical Portals, and leans into this concept, using elemental portals, solfeggio frequencies, and the body as a site of performance. And so naturally, when I saw the theme of this year’s Open Call, I felt elated that my body of work is aligned with the curatorial vision of this exhibit.
99 Names is a portal between the threshold of birth and decay, a point of meditation on the dying paradigm of patriarchy, colonialism, and fear that has plagued the history of Sudan. In the wake of its destruction is immense grief for what was lost, and simultaneously an opening to create something new. To imagine a future for Sudan that is born from the spirit of Kandakas (women revolutionaries) — a moment we saw reflected in the Sudanese revolution in 2019.
I hope people walk away from 99 Names with an invitation to pray for Sudan. Not in the abstract sense, but in a literal one. No matter who you call God, or what your relationship to the divine may look like, I hope this work renews your faith, and calls on you to remember that our liberation is inherently interconnected. We all benefit from a world where Sudanese people are safe and cared for.
“I hope people walk away from 99 Names with an invitation to pray for Sudan. Not in the abstract sense, but in a literal one. No matter who you call God, or what your relationship to the divine may look like, I hope this work renews your faith, and calls on you to remember that our liberation is inherently interconnected. We all benefit from a world where Sudanese people are safe and cared for.”
SHEER: As you continue to grow as an artist and storyteller, what questions are shaping your work right now? Are there rituals or parts of your lineage that you’re still reconnecting with in new ways?
Marwa: The questions guiding my work these days are: What do I need to remember? What is the medicine needed for this time of transformation? How can we work together to create our next paradigm? As I continue to develop my art practice I am looking forward to connecting with new teachers, delving into a phase of research to inform future work, and sitting with the continuous stream of emotions that unfold as we witness the decay of empire in real time.
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Photography by Nabila Wirakusumah
NYALLAH is known for blending elements of neo-soul, R&B, hip-hop, and West African rhythms while exploring themes of self-expansion, transformation, and love. With their latest project, R+B, recorded in phases spanning a near-death bike accident and an eye-opening trip to Costa Rica, R+B navigates relationships, desirability, and self-awareness from a black queer perspective. Through enchanting vocals and vulnerable lyrics, NYALLAH reminds us that desirability is not love and our liberation lies in de-centering ourselves and prioritizing collective care.