Today we’d like to introduce you to Nadia Alamah.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
How far back do we go? I appreciate the question. I’m a second-generation Lebanese American writer and artist originally from Michigan — and I didn’t start truly becoming the person I am now until I left school and met my multidisciplinary and welcoming creative community of artists, writers, musicians, theater people, entrepreneurs in Flint. (The one and the same. The water-Flint, the Michael Moore Flint, is quite full of a warm and welcoming and inclusive creative types and a resilient and pioneering community of folks who stand for home).
Back home, with no previous experience to my name, my community at the Creative Alliance supported my desire to create a series of workshops — the Voices workshops — exploring the collaborative process between artists and writers — and the Flint Public Art Project helped me via arts residency to stitch together the Flint Bedouin Tent, a nomadic events space for art shows, storytelling and general gathering, as well as to find a home for the continuity of a weekly meetup, Must Art Mondays. Before I left Michigan, a nonprofit named Red Ink Flint invited me to collaborate with them and produce a multidisciplinary arts and music festival based on the Riot Grrrl Ladyfests of the 2000s called Ladyfest Flint. With respect to its roots, we emphasized multicultural and LGBTQ+ inclusion as we feel that the heart of the movement isn’t just in womxn’s empowerment but in our empowerment across all cultures and our ability to love across all spectrums and genders in our humanity. Flint still treats me like I never left home, as I was recently invited to produce an art installation at a Mary Shelley-themed event by the Flint Horror Collective — and I was grateful and humbled to be able to still belong to both places I call home.
I moved out to the Los Angeles area in 2016 with someone I was in love with at the time. I used to be a follow-your-love-to-the-ends-of-the-earth girl. We came out here and just tried to make it work somehow. We tried searching for jobs, staying in places for a couple of days at a time, and then we ended up living in his car for a month or two in parking lots around the area. When we finally found a place of our own, I spent the first three years of my time stringing jobs together, trying to find work in between jobs, and slowly but surely connecting with other artists and writers in the spaces between hours-long commutes and bus rides. I read at open mics, painted live at events. For a while, I set up art at The Big Draw in Santa Ana. I was invited to read at various open mics, including The Ugly Mug’s Two Idiots Peddling Poetry and eventually the Definitive Soapbox. I was encouraged to read poems and share live art at Shaken Vanity’s Block Party events.
After that three years, I moved to Long Beach and had six months of pursuing creative things more dearly before COVID hit. For a few months, I was the resident artist at an open mic in Long Beach — for two-three hours, I painted a scene on a 6×9 foot drop cloth canvas right behind performers on stage in Elinor’s in downtown. Eventually, I started working with and befriending poets at The Poetry Lab, who stayed supportive of me as I experienced some struggles later down the road. Around the settling-in time, I also became closer to a couple of my friends near the desert who did nature-based photography and participated in some of their photoshoots. I looked for every venue and outlet to try something in creativity outside of my norm with others who liked to create art and connect with each other because this is what defines my heart: our ability to be closer to each other through what our souls have to say about the life we’re living.
Then, everything shut down. In that time, I experienced a lot of isolation — living on my own, immunocompromised. I started spending a lot of time in nature and with a handful of friends outside until we had vaccines, and then everything felt a little safer. As we navigated the isolation into however we would define the present, I explored my creativity in the following ways: first for Arab American Heritage Month’s timing being the same as National Poetry Month, I decided to specifically explore poetry discussing this side of my identity I have to reach for deliberately in order for it to remain present. If I don’t write about it or talk about it, it’s barely there, and I’m working towards harmonizing these elements of my identity. So I started producing these chapbooks — “Yalla Habibi: poems in 3arabeezi” and “Baladi.”
After my mother’s mother passed from cancer, I was grieving in isolation. I started going out in nature and taking photos and videos of myself dancing in different spaces, calling them grief dances. It was in part a celebration of the body that my ancestors and family have given me, and loving it in spite of a society telling me to erase its most defining features; it was in part having nowhere else to place this grief, as connections with family and friends were limited and estranged in the wake of isolation, or maybe it was my grief that left me feeling disconnected; it was in part a remembering of how to dance, and how to build a relationship with environment; and how to deliberately run towards a joy, knowing that they would want me to live life in joy, and not away from others.
Life has stretched and pushed my ability to stay connected with my community in different ways. In the last couple of years, both of my grandmas died. And for a few months, I was recovering from a concussion. I had an accidental stint of six months of travel where I was only intending to visit my grandpa and spend time with him for a few weeks before he went back to Lebanon — with death so fresh in our family, time with loved ones is more important now than it’s ever been — but then a series of short-term jobs led me from place to place across the country. I began experiencing the joy of connecting with others in some work I was learning — becoming a low voltage technician in a construction setting, experiencing the support of guys on crew during the night shift — but the focus on work limited my ability to create for a time, as I prioritized taking care of my practical needs. Some of the work I am making now is exploring this further.
Now I’m back from that travel stint and trying to recover my senses. I’m moving out of my apartment and realizing I have the opportunity to put together a themed show in this place I made home about some of the similarities and differences I’ve observed between Lebanon, the country my family is from, and Long Beach, my current home. Between neighbors and neighbors, between housing crisis and housing crisis, between cost and cost, between connection and connection. As prices and living costs continue to rise, as connection proves to take more effort and energy than it used to, I am forced to make some changes in my lifestyle and as I know that I’m not alone, I want to make art that speaks to what we are going through, and how we aren’t going through it alone. (This show is also supported in part by a microgrant from the Arts Council for Long Beach, and I am super grateful for their support.)
You might ask me, why are you including these life details? Why isn’t it just art? And I would tell you that it’s because I can’t separate the two. What happens in my life impacts my ability to make art. The community, or distance from community, impacts my ability to make art. Grief, and loss of loved ones, impacts when and how I will make my art. The amount of time and energy I have outside of having to manage my practical details also makes this impact. And more than this, I am also a person outside of my art, trying to grow and do better each day by those in my life whom I love.
Ultimately, as a writer and an artist, I hope to tell stories about what we navigate in our lives, starting from my own central point of experiences and then headed outward — to listen to and understand the experiences and stories of my neighbors, friends and community — and to provide social commentary about what we experience, as well as to celebrate joy. I try to create my own joy through art and share that with my community as I find the capacity. And another defining theme would be the exploration of what home means and what it means when we call any entity home, living or nonliving in its own respect.
And in the meantime, I try to rest and remember that I need to take good care of myself before I can take care of those I love because this is how we make the love we’re trying to give last for the long run.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
Some of the challenges in the past few years would definitely relate to practical upkeep of life details, managing the isolation from COVID that I had to invariably experience as someone immunocompromised — the recovery from which I see may still be impacting our lives? We don’t like to talk about it. We don’t like to be vulnerable, but it’s important to acknowledge these challenges so that we can navigate them according to our own personal truths.
From what I’ve seen living in a smaller town vs. in a more population-dense area, I’m learning so far that it invariably does take more energy, more work hours, more out of people altogether to be able to maintain their living situations — and as costs and inflation continue to rise, we have to work even harder to achieve the same end result as we had to five or six years ago.
We should acknowledge this. When we do, we see that this presents increased logistical barriers to maintaining a sense of community with others — it is important to acknowledge that to embrace the rawness and the fullness of what we are all living together, that this embitters us and hardens us when we navigate it all on our own.
It is important that we live our lives claiming our right to joy — our right to not have to hustle so hard to be able to do the other things we want with our lives — enjoy time with others, make art, pursue new hobbies or interests, take in new music, spend time in nature, time to rest. Time to rest! And a part of this means, I believe, rejecting hustle culture, setting boundaries for our own personal health, resisting and protesting inflation increases and rent rate increases — advocating for a living wage for everyone. Doing some kind of everyday action towards that protesting, or protesting in our own way, if we can’t get out and hold up picket signs in a traditional way. I love art as protest — art is political as much as it is personal and joyful, and we have an opportunity to speak about what’s going on to advocate for a better life for our neighbors, our loved ones, and ourselves.
I am still navigating this dilemma, but as I observe it, I am attempting to respond to it by listening to my own truths and discovering what they are; writing and reflecting about it; and adjusting parameters in my life to facilitate conditions for my own well-being. I am trying to slow down, to create a decent routine, and to maintain consistent connections with my support network, as well as build room for fostering new friendships with my neighbors and community. I’m trying to be patient with myself and reach out to my friends more, and I’m grateful when they also do the same. I’ve been open with them about my struggles lately with the six-month stint, and they’ve been supportive of me as I start over again.
One other challenge has been, in the wake of all of this, giving myself permission to slow down, mess up a lot, and make ugly art. Sometimes I get so caught up in my own expectations that I don’t make much art at all! And this isn’t fun, I don’t recommend it. So immersing myself in other hobbies where I know I’ll “mess up” and be okay with it has allowed me to help reclaim some of my joy. I love music, but I have no formal or technical training. So lately I’ve tried picking up violin (thank you lady from Craigslist who met me in a parking lot in Malibu!) because I know I’ll never try to join an orchestra or anything, and I know I just want to have fun with this thing, maybe pick up a couple tunes and fiddle jigs and classic Arabic songs to sing around a fire with friends! That would be the dream. So that kind of thing has helped me with getting more relaxed about the other art and storytelling I’m trying to complete in the present.
And I am also responding by attempting to be compassionate with myself about my limits with creating art. I used to be so hard on myself about not making art all the time! One method I used to respond to this, which I would recommend for anyone else this resonates with, is that I made an art journal out of a small, pocket-sized, and very cute little notebook I got at a store for $3. I made a little index of symbols to highlight places where I make insights, get things done, and make reflections on what I experienced. And then the rest of it is just dates and what happened on those dates, and then occasional pages where I note down to-do lists and upcoming events. It’s made a difference — it’s helped me to see that I’m still making some kind of progress toward incorporating creativity into my life, and it’s allowed me the opportunity to better focus on the kind of art that I would like to share with others, at my own pace and time.
I talk about art more here because that is what I’m hoping to spend most of my time on, but a lot of my community in the LA and OC area are involved in poetry. I don’t feel that I’ve struggled much in this area because I’ve only been treating poetry as a means of personal growth and exploration. It’s not something where I’m currently actively trying to get published in places or make a career. For me, poetry has been a means of connecting with others over life, and learning more about who I’m becoming as I navigate life. It was the thing that helped me get my voice back when I was struggling to express myself, and over time, it’s become something so intuitive to my life that I just let it be and let it do its thing on its own time. It’s the thing that creates a place where I can meet with others and have good life conversations.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
So, I would say that I’m a bit of an artist and a bit of a writer? I’m not sure, I do things for fun. I like to tell stories and make sense of life in whatever medium feels most comfortable at the moment, and I like to make the process and experiences behind the art tell their story as much as the final product. Let’s have a cup of tea/coffee/whiskey together for a minute, and I’ll tell some stories.
In school, I had learned some basics about drawing and painting, but I integrated some photography into my process based on what I learned doing journalism in high school. When I tried to put together a painting series in Flint a while ago, I started by doing photoshoots with friends and creating these concepts. For one of them, I did a makeshift fabric top out of fourteen yards of fabric so that the sleeves looked like an abstract kimono top, and then we went to this architectural feature of a concrete park bordering the Flint River. I took pictures and videos of my friend dancing with the sleeves in motion and then composited various sketches of the photos to create a painting composition.
One weekend while I was still studying at uni, one of my friends taught me some of the basics on how to run a sewing machine. A year or two later, when I was at the art residency, I pieced together a Bedouin-style tent (by no means a real tent because I didn’t weave the fabric from goat hair, but something inspired by the structure of a traditional tent) by repurposing sheets and pillowcases purchased from thrift stores and donated by friends — I had to determine and construct a pattern with the fabric I had and sew it in this cold, drafty room with no heat, 50 degrees and only getting colder in October, with weightlifting gloves to keep my hands warm, and my cat enjoying making a slipping slide of all the fabric on the floor. Not knowing what I was doing, I sewed this 13×17 foot tent with the foot up! Now I know better, but you have to start somewhere. There was no proper tension and I tried to make that tension manually, moving the fabric with my hands. But you know, it held up! It held its shape as my friends and I pitched that tent on the lawn in downtown for art walk and threw some gallery walls in it for an art show with multiple artists. That was the cool thing about the tent — you could never pitch it alone, and you needed group help. More importantly than concern for any technical details, it needed a collective process in order for it to work — something I think is logistically really tough to practice in real life.
I love to live paint at events and just out in public. I guess you’re supposed to sit in your studio for hours with your painting, never see people or just allow yourself to be the most vulnerable when you’re the safest, on your own. But I already spend a lot of time not seeing people by virtue of some of the work that I do. And being social with others gives me energy and makes me feel comfortable. I’ll still do some work on my own, but I really enjoy live painting. So I like to go back and forth between painting, getting comfortable with the sounds of people interacting with each other in the background once I get focused, sometimes painting with the flow of the conversation or performance happening while I paint, and then stop to socialize every now and then. Doing the open mic before COVID shutdown was fun because I felt like I was trying to create something in tandem with the performers on stage — and as I was directly behind them, I couldn’t step too far back to gauge perspective of what I was painting, which presented its own fun challenge.
Lately, it’s been the act of getting comfortable with creating consistently and relaxing enough to get something done that I’ve been meditating with. So I’ll throw together whimsical colored pencil illustrations or make line doodles with my writing pens. It keeps me busy while I get ready for the next project. One of my more recent projects, before the one I’m working on right now, was this art installation I created in Flint at the Flint Horror Collective’s Mary Shelley-themed event featuring a market and performances. The concept was to create a walk-through tunnel-like booth inspired by how she got the idea to write Frankenstein — the summery night, the waking dream, after just trying so hard to write something for a short story competition between her, and her husband, and Lord Byron, and her sister, where nothing had come to her yet — at least nothing she felt was good enough to share. The installation had fabric draped over a 3D wooden frame, filled with led’s and polyfill to look like rolling clouds, and you could walk up to a podium over which I had put together a fake cloud, with hands emerging out of a book and lights that gave the appearance of lightning flashing through the clouds. The book came from a local bookstore, Totem Books.
Actually, so much of that project came together because of community support, and this is why I’d like to emphasize again how important community can be in our creative process. I only put together that project because one of my friends insisted I follow through on the first idea I had, which was that art installation — where I had never done this kind of work before, previously, unless you count the tent? I’m not sure yet. Every piece is its own thing, and labels can act as constraints. But that friend supported me. And then a friend at the bookstore donated the book that I used, took me into the stacks of the basement to find the right prop book to use for this. One of my closest friends provided input while I was trying to figure out how to create the structure of the booth and lent me power tools to use for that process because I didn’t have access to any. A complete stranger gave me a discount on fabric after I told her what all I was using it for, and that was incredibly kind. I’m realizing that the most successful work I’ve made so far, even if its access was limited, had my community behind it in order for it to manifest.
The work I’m making lately for this art show is composed of a few things. I’ve been getting into body painting a little more recently (it’s really lovely because I love to draw on people too) and so part of this series consists of making some paintings on my torso and then photographing and displaying the results. The theme of these is comparisons between Long Beach and Lebanon, and I’m choosing to relay the paintings on my body as a canvas because this exploration of travel in identity has been something that my body has physically journeyed through and still continues to. There’s also a section of photography of both Lebanon and Long Beach because I do also love trying to capture moments — but I also want to invite the audience to see the comparisons for themselves. I’m really excited to piece together some installations as well and have them around the apartment, using some of the space — it’s a goodbye letter to the home that I’ve made in this apartment, and I want to take the opportunity to explore the relationship between home as the space, and the art made for the space.
And then, in the center of the room, I’ll have something collaborative that I invite everyone to contribute to — something about Long Beach I love is how neighbors leave things out on the road for others to take if they need it. Plates, kitchen supplies, furniture. Someone left out this water-damaged wooden dollhouse, and I thought it was beautiful. I initially had different plans for it, but isn’t a dollhouse ultimately the blueprint for dreaming of home? And so I invite everyone who comes in to see the show to paint, or draw, or add something to this house. Let it be our dream house. Let it not make sense. Let it be what we decide it should be. I want this beautiful thing that was left out to take its own new life and be loved by everyone who comes into contact with it. Our dreaming of home is priceless and immeasurable and should be cherished for what it is, no matter how irrational or out of reach the dream might feel in times of crisis. It’s our right.
I also write poems, but I do that when my soul needs it, and then share when it feels right. I’ll sometimes put together chapbooks with art I’ve made or photos I’ve taken, or art made from photos I’ve taken. I like to do the graphic design thing too, because it makes me feel happy. I like making smaller chapbooks, but maybe one day I’ll publish a full book of poems or even indulge my shy attempts at story-writing and finish a novel. Which is funny because by trade, I’ve been a professional writer for almost a decade now, but I’m still working on allowing myself to go full-force creative in fiction mode.
Before we let you go, we’ve got to ask if you have any advice for those who are just starting out?
You have the right to enjoy your life.
You don’t need anyone else’s approval in making what you want to make and doing what you want to do. And we can make what we want to make and do what we want to do at our own pace, in our own time. The thing inside of you that wants to do creative things is always going to be there, and it deserves to be love and nourished. Sometimes that’s in small bits and pieces but it’s better to have that pocket-sized piece than to keep putting it off. And if we have to put it off? That’s okay. Life happens and we need to do what we need to take care of ourselves so that we can keep doing this creative thing in the long run.
If I could, I would remind my younger self that their personality is more than the creative thing they love to do and that they can allow themselves to just live life outside of it, no matter how about the creative thing they are. It’s okay to have other hobbies and things and to still make time for those hobbies outside of work and general life maintenance and upkeep. It’s necessary to have those things to stay sane, I feel like it’s just harder for us to do when we have to maintain a full-time or OT work schedule on top of making time for the creative projects, friends/social life, and personal upkeep. It’s part of what I’m still struggling with, and the ability to even have free time is so much more political than I had any idea it would be when I was first starting out, but I would tell my younger self to not worry about it so much, because the art’s always going to find its way into my life, no matter how busy it gets with other things; therefore, it’s okay to also get busy with other things. And to also not worry about it because we’re going to try to make protest art about how we deserve to have more free time in life and for that to be perfectly valid and reasonable an objective.
I vividly remember this one interaction I had with a rapper one night, at a bar in Long Beach, after a show of some kind, where she said to me, “I’ve been going to all these networking events and mixers for a while. And all I meet is brands, brands, brands. I’m so sick and tired of meeting brands. I want to meet people.” And she made me realize that for the marketing side of things, all that stuff isn’t really as important as we think it is? I mean, sure, it’s important. In a city where everyone has their job and their side creative thing, it’s important. But is it that important? If I focus on making the same kinds of flower paintings all the time, and all I do is make flower paintings and post them on Instagram, am I really going to enjoy that? Personally, no. I’m going to change it up. I’m going to make things and see what happens and just have fun meeting people on different walks of life, and also that’s how I’m eventually and naturally going to find myself making different kinds of art for different kinds of situations, and keeping myself open to new life channels and directions. I’m willing to stay low key and not worry about online stats and all of that if I can just keep having fun and making art and doing creative things with other people, and just enjoy the whole process and experience of life, and all the paths it has to offer.
That in itself is more important an objective than any other metric anyone else wants to try to sell to me.
I don’t know you or your situation. I am writing this whole advice blurb as if whoever’s reading this is struggling, likely because I myself look for advice mainly when I’m struggling, and likely because I’m still struggling now and just working through it. Of course, I’m struggling — with the major life events that happened recently, and that I didn’t really factor in when I started out. Because when I started out, I was so enamored with pursuing my dreams more than I was even concerned with the terrain I was traversing to get there.
If you’re struggling like me, I’ll say that in addition to therapy, making art and trying to stay connected with my friends while I make some big life changes is helpful. Making art in relation to my family’s home is helping me to also move through and process the losses of my grandmas, and it’s helping me come to terms with the weirdness of being second generation and in between worlds, in a third made of both. But I’d say also that having a pursuit that allows you to be silly and let go is just as important as the one you’re putting all kinds of extra energy in so that life doesn’t get too serious too fast.
If you’re struggling, I would hope that you would be gentle on yourself because none of this has been easy for a while now, and please, please acknowledge all that you are handling when you are overwhelmed, and don’t belittle it or demean it. It may not look heavy to someone else, but when you add up all the things, don’t they get heavy together? So please be easy on yourself with where you are now, and be kind to yourself because you deserve softness. You deserve gentle. You deserve listening and understanding.
You deserve the support you need to get through it so that you can continue to do the thing where you enjoy your life.
Everything takes so much more time than we think it does, so it’s good to have fun along the way. If you’re like me, you’re probably still going to get a lot of stuff done at the last minute, but then again, you probably have fun with it too, so I’m not sure what advice there is in that, except that it’s still good to slow down sometimes and give it time to breathe, and I’m still working on that, honestly.
Some of the other things I can think of would be:
Use your art supplies — some of them will go bad eventually, and you can always get more later, you’ll find a way.
Relax about your first draft. You can always revise later, but finish what you started, because even if it’s not in alignment with your tastes yet, it’s going to do something great for someone, somewhere. Sharing it is better than hiding it away unless you need to hide it to have something that no one else can tear away at. But share when you can because what you have to say deserves to be heard. And what you have to say needs to be heard. Because you’re the only one who’s seen it and lived it and understood it in the way that you have.
Some of your best work happens when you let go of your expectations.
And last but not least, don’t forget to wear sunscreen.
Contact Info:
- Website: nadiathellama.com
- Instagram: @nadiaathellama
Image Credits
Sven Ellirand, Rod Campbell for the purple photo.
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