Artist Jamila Hooker’s ‘Foreign Postcards’ project divorces Arabic from fear
On any given Sunday, Jamila Hooker will be in her Harlem apartment with a magic marker in hand, making black swooping marks on postcards that she will mail to dozens, hundreds, thousands of people across the globe. All she wants in return is a photo of the recipient holding the postcard on which she scribed their name in a mysterious script—Arabic.
“Foreign Postcards” is Hooker’s ongoing artwork and social experiment that she conceived on a creative retreat in 2013. People sign up on her website, and when they email her their photo she adds it to her mosaics of participants demonstrating peace with a language that many people associate with fear, hate and danger.
