Story by Jamey Cross
Video by Andie Rea
As a Muslim woman, Kulsum Tasnif’s art is driven by politics.
“The topics and the themes that I tackle have to do with the struggles that me and my community go through on a daily basis,” the Raleigh woman said.
And her latest effort, the Protest Purse Project, creates art out of purses.
Now a mother of three and in her second year of graduate school at N.C. State University, Tasnif said she saw that much of America was “devastated” by the results of the 2016 election. She began attending rallies and protesting. She created signs or herself and her friends to carry, each one equipped with artistic sketches and purposeful painting, but motivated by the political and current events happening around her.
“I just began to get really frustrated because I felt like the people who needed to see these messages and to hear these voices weren’t actually hearing them,” Tasnif said. “Basically, I think the series just came out of sheer frustration of not being heard.”
Tasnif wanted those voices and stories to be heard in everyday life, not just in the crowd of a protest or rally. So, she thought to write her words on something practical — a purse — so they could be carried out into communities daily, along with the messages she wanted to share.
One of the first purses she made, a rectangular, black clutch, reads “Impeach 45.” Tasnif created it with the same detail, patience and emotion that went into the paintings that are placed carefully around her home, some of which are more than 20 years old.
Once it was completed, Tasnif carried the purse out into her daily life, displaying it in her hand like the piece of artwork it was. She felt empowered.
“It gave me strength,” she said. “And it made me feel like I had something to say, and I had this power to say it.”
It didn’t take long for Tasnif to realize that she’d found a new outlet for women to tell their stories. She began painting more purses, some for women in her life, and some without an intended owner. On each purse, Tasnif paints patterns and messages of one to a few words.
Immigrant, Seek Love, Dreamers Welcome, Womxn of Science, Black Queen are a few of the messages Tasnif has painted on purses for herself and the women around her.
For her daughter, Imaan Siddiqi, who had felt anxious about the potential for gun violence in her high school, she made a purse with the word, “kuebiko.”
Kuebiko is a made up word from the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows; it points to the feeling of confusion and shock toward what is happening around you, which is how Tasnif’s daughter was feeling about gun violence.
Though Tasnif was hesitant, her use of social media to share photos of the purses helped spread the word about the project. Orders began pouring in. People wanted to tell Tasnif her stories, and they wanted to reclaim words of their own and carry them into their lives as beautiful artwork.
—
When Majida Amchraf was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer in November 2017, she was overwhelmed with hopelessness.
Through her first rounds of chemotherapy, she was scared and lonely. Without delay, physical symptoms began.
Her tumor was removed in February 2018, but she still needed chemotherapy. Because of the physical strain she had suffered during her first rounds of the chemotherapy drip, she switched to chemotherapy pills.
Tasnif discovered Amchraf’s story on Facebook. A woman she didn’t know began following her and liking her posts. It was Amchraf, then cancer-free. Tasnif decided one day to look at Amchraf’s profile and immediately felt compelled by her story of survival.
It reminded her of her mother, who had passed away after a long battle with cancer just a few years earlier.
“I felt compelled to go to my art room immediately and create something for her even though I didn’t know her,” Tasnif said. “And I included my sister and my brother in this project because we talked about what mom would have wanted to say, you know, and we thought about the battle that women who have breast cancer go through on a daily basis, and it is really rough.”
Fighter.
That’s the word painted across the bold, hot pink clutch that sits displayed in Amchraf’s bedroom.
Tasnif said she and her siblings chose the word because they knew Amchraf was truly fighting the battle of her life. For Tasnif, the most nerve-wracking part of creating Amchraf’s purse, but telling the internet stranger that she’d felt so compelled by her story that she wanted to create something she thought might help in some small way.
And it did, in a big way, help Amchraf find empowerment in her story.
“My purse is very personal to me,” Amchraf said. “It means so much to me. It means survival.”
Amchraf said that she was honored to be part of the Protest Purse project. She was able to meet and talk with many of the other women Tasnif has made purses for.
“It was almost like a sisterhood,” she said. “The female empowerment that Kulsum gave to each of us during this project really brought us all together.”
—
Caroline Cockrell, a Durham native, is a freelance photographer who became involved in the Protest Purse Project after becoming close friends with Tasnif.
For each woman and her purse, Cockrell would decide on an appropriate location, spend a few hours there with the women, and take photos that capture them feeling comfortable, confident and empowered with their purse.
Doing her photoshoot with Cockrell at the Duke Cancer Center, though, Amchraf said she began to feel empowered.
“That building was painful for me,” Amchraf said..”I saw pain, I saw death when I went into that building. But getting the purse and going back to that building after I’d survived cancer… going back there was an enlightening time for me. It showed me that I am a fighter, cancer can be beaten.”
Cockrell said she enjoyed getting to use her photography to help women speak out and tell their stories.
“It was an honor to be a part of this,” Cockrell said. “Kulsum’s work has always been very meaningful and admirable, so her asking me to be a part of giving women a voice and uplifting them was very meaningful for me.”
Art has always been part of Tasnif’s life, and her art has been heavily inspired by her experience and perspective of being a Muslim woman living in America.
The Protest Purse project was created during a time when we need more people to pay attention to others’ voices, Tasnif said, and she hopes that’s what happens.
