Flint, Mi –
On Saturday, April 18, I attended the 5th annual MENA (Middle East and North Africa) Artist Showcase hosted by the Arab American Heritage Council at the Flint Institute of Arts.
Held during National Arab American Heritage Month, the showcase created a space for MENA artists and vendors to share their work. The Flint Institute of Arts made for an elegant backdrop. The event brought together a mix of visual art, vendors, music, and dance, each offering a different perspective.
Throughout the gallery, pieces reflected personal journeys and collective stories. Some of the vendors sold traditional wares like hand painted glassware, embroidered goods, Egyptian linen clothes with classic designs, or even custom calligraphy. Others were more contemporary, like photography prints or screen-printed apparel. All carried a sense of pride in reverence to their culture.
One piece that stuck out to me in particular was a simple photography book. I couldn’t help but flip through the pages. These “Slice of Life” photos were of everyday people enjoying the quiet moments of their lives. On one page, a couple sat on a rooftop holding hands overlooking a city. Another, kids laughing and playing in the street. Every page filled with peaceful moments in time, with beautiful homes and scenery as the backdrop. I looked down to see one of the photos labeled “Tehran, 1976”.
What does that city block look like now?
After a period of browsing and mingling with the vendors, AAHC Executive Director Lucine Jarrah set the stage for the evening and introduced the first artist.
Musician Laith Alattar is an Arab American composer, vocalist, and oud player. His work blends traditional Arabic sounds with contemporary influence. For the evening, he prepared a medley of songs hailing from different countries in the region.
Out of ignorance, I did not understand a single word in the medley. But what I did understand was that each time there was a change in tempo or cadence, someone else in the room would light up. A member of the crowd would hear a familiar song and lean over to their neighbor with a smile.
After his set I briefly spoke with Alattar and complimented his work, we exchanged cards.
“You are a psychologist?” I asked, I am sure my eyes got big in fear of an impromptu evaluation. He laughed and tapped his oud.
“I’m a psychologist for money; I do this For love.”
To me, this was a small window into something I had never experienced. To others, this was an opportunity for a sense of home through song and community.
Palestinian artist Yasmin Amin spoke about her connection to art and music. A singer and DJ known as Freecheh, Amin carried that spirit into her shared performance. She taught the crowd a classic Palestinian folk song line by line, guiding them through the chorus before leading the piece herself, singing the verses while the audience joined in.
Amin admitted that this was her first time teaching a group a song like this and was extremely grateful for the participation of the crowd.
Thowra Dabke is a traditional Dabke dance group and brought an energy that connected past and present through movement. Ayman Aboutaleb the troupe’s instructor for the evening brought out one of his star pupils to highlight what his class can teach and what the dance should ideally look like.
Dabke – a Levantine folk dance, particularly popular among Lebanese, Jordanian, Palestinian, and Syrian communities. Dabke combines circle dance and line dancing and is widely performed at weddings and other joyous occasions. The line forms from right to left and the leader of the dabke heads the line, alternating between facing the audience and the other dancers.
Once the showcase dance was complete, Aboutaleb brought up volunteers from the crowd. Some were already familiar with Dabke, others were not. Hand in hand and slowly but surely the volunteers were walked through a series of traditional steps; eventually dancing to a full song.
While the MENA Artist Showcase highlighted artistic expression, the underlying reflection was a beautiful display of the heart of Middle Eastern culture in Flint.
I couldn’t help but feel connected.
I reached out to Lucine Jarrah after the event for more information on the AAHC and Arab Heritage Month.
“The AAHC is a community-based organization dedicated to uniting and uplifting Arab and MENA communities in Flint through immigration services, advocacy, and arts and culture programming. We exist to make sure our community has access to resources, feels supported, and has a platform to tell its stories.
Organizations like ours are important because we are not just responding to needs, we are building the long-term infrastructure for empowered and engaged communities.”
For Jarrah, National Arab American Heritage Month is both a celebration and a time to reflect.
“It is a month, a moment, to celebrate our diverse stories, cultures, and contributions across every sector of society,” she said. “But it is also a time for reflection.”
“Throughout history, Arab/MENA voices have too often been overlooked, misunderstood, targeted, or erased all together. There have been periods when we have had to fight against bigotry and hate, fight for recognition, fight against surveillance, and fight against efforts to weaken our movements and break our spirit.
Yet despite all the challenges our communities continue to endure, we have never stopped building, mobilizing, preserving our stories, and rejecting every attempt to silence us.”
“We see many people attending our cultural showcases and musical performances, but for us, real solidarity is rooted in collective care and action,” she said. “Building and organizing with us means standing against oppression, fighting for real investment in our communities, supporting immigrant families, and showing up for one another again and again.”
That call comes at a time when Jarrah says the challenges facing the community are as urgent as ever.
“This past year has been one of the most challenging our organization has ever faced”
“Our mission, our work, and most importantly, our communities have come under some of the most egregious attacks we have ever seen.”
Even so, she points to resilience as a defining trait; something she’s asking the broader community to take part in.
“We need your voice. We need your energy. We need you to show up in support of our movements for justice and liberation, to help us uproot the forces of harm embedded in our policies and systems, and to help build, through love, hope, care, vision, and belief, the future we know is possible.”
The evening and my conversation with Executive Director Jarrah made something clear, what happens at an event like this is only a small part of a larger picture.
Culture, artistic expression, and community aren’t a novelty to be confined to a single month. It lives in the lives of our neighbors, in the art around us, in the food we eat, and the music we move to.
Learn more about the AAHC here.
