Fatimah Lorén

Fatimah will work with the 52nd Street Business Association to revive Miracles on 52nd Street. An intercultural community festival, the four-day event is intended to provide foreign-born and native-born residents an opportunity to share cultural performances, visual art, music, and food. The festival’s goals are to break down barriers among residents of the neighborhood, bring the diverse groups that reside in West Philadelphia together, and attract people from all areas, while providing a boost for small business owners of the 52nd Street corridor.

Fatimah is a multi-disciplinary artist who uses singing, songwriting, sacred chanting, poetry, creative movement, theater, and storytelling to support the development, education and visibility of emerging communities engaged across difference. As a formerly poor, queer woman of African descent, her works address topics of poverty and hunger, childhood loss and survival, sacred revelation, and movement building. Her art is rooted in intercultural organizing and queer empowerment and often utilizes aspects of peer-counseling and other group healing processes in both the development of her work and performance. Her piece ReUnion is a multi-media journey in which eleven artists of color addressed childhood trauma, forgiveness, and broader issues of drug addiction and mental health using animation, painting, music, theater, and poetry. Other works include Ebonics, a poem addressing the ways that black people have been shamed and silenced, and WE WHO HUNGER, a poem about the haunting realities of food-based oppression. As much of Fatimah’s art is centered around international community bridge-building, she has taken her work to local queer and social justice organizations across Africa, Europe, and Asia. She sees it as profoundly important to offer her particular narrative as a means to unlock universal principles of love, freedom, and connection.