In the Twin Cities art scene this weekend, choral performances in Hmong, Somali, Haitian Creole and more celebrate immigrant experiences, while a play by New Arab American Theater Works tells the story of a young Palestinian woman navigating displacement in the 1960s. Meanwhile, the Weisman Art Museum showcases Kara Walker’s striking silhouettes, confronting the exclusion of Black narratives in Civil War history.

Multilingual choral concert offers a musical exploration of immigration

The Boston Choral Ensemble, in collaboration with Minneapolis Choir Co-Op, presents “My Journey, Yours,” a multilingual concert featuring works by immigrant composers and writers. The program, which premiered in Boston earlier this year, highlights immigrant experiences through choral music.

Boston Choral Ensemble’s Artistic Director Katherine Chan, who is originally from Hong Kong, said the concert is tailored to reflect the experiences of diverse immigrant populations as it tours across the country. She noted that the choir’s  40 singers are learning and performing songs in multiple languages, including Haitian Creole, Hmong, Somali, Tamil, Vietnamese, and Spanish.

“They are really feeling the hardship of learning these languages, just as immigrants have to adapt to new languages in a new country,” Chan said. 

Among the works is “La Frontera” (The Border) by composer Judith Shatin, a piece that sets music to a poem written by an undocumented youth held in an American maximum-security detention center. Another is composer Melissa Dunphy’s “N-400 Erasure Songs,” which reshapes text from the U.S. citizenship application form to explore the emotional toll of the immigration process. 

“The piece follows the words that many immigrants face when applying for citizenship — rejection and delay,” Chan said. “You are told ‘No’ so many times and then, at the end, the piece says, ‘You are the best of us.’ It’s that feeling of finally fitting in, that sigh of relief that many of us have experienced.”

“Finding a Home” by Sydney Guillaume, performed in both English and Haitian Creole, examines the pain of feeling out of place, while also celebrating the idea of finding and creating new homes. 

“My favorite part is when it says, ‘Home isn’t confined to a place,’” Chan said. “It resonates so deeply because home can be anywhere we choose, without giving up the old one.”

The concert will also feature a choral piece by St. Paul composer Elliot Z. Levine featuring two poems by Hmong writers from St. Paul’s East Side: Lee Her’s “Love Forever” and Peter Yang’s “My Dad the Mekong and Me the Mississippi.” The event will also include speakers from Communities Organizing Latine Power and Action (COPAL), who will share their personal stories as part of the performance.

“We are all connected to these stories because we all know someone who is an immigrant — whether it be family, friends, or neighbors,” Chan said. “This program celebrates those stories, whether they reflect hardship or joy.”

Play tackles themes of Palestinian identity and displacement

New Arab American Theater Works is premiering “Rosette,” a play by Palestinian American playwright William Nour. The production tells the coming-of-age story of a young Palestinian Christian woman grappling with identity and loss in the wake of Al-Nakba (“catastrophe” in Arabic), which marks the displacement of 750,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.

While Nour began developing the play in 2019, its themes resonate deeply in the context of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, which has led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands and killed more than 40,000 people in Gaza since the Hamas attack on October 7, which killed more than 1,300 Israelis.

Through the character of Rosette, a 16-year-old Palestinian refugee living in Haifa in 1966, Nour aims to challenge prevailing narratives by portraying her struggles with family separation and her quest for identity.

Kara Walker’s silhouettes illuminate the hidden histories of the Civil War

The Weisman Art Museum will present “Kara Walker: Harper’s Pictorial History of the Civil War (Annotated),” an exhibition featuring 15 large-scale prints from the artist’s 2005 portfolio. The prints will be shown alongside original engravings by 19th-century artist Winslow Homer, highlighting how African Americans were often excluded from traditional Civil War narratives.

Walker’s collection addresses historical stereotypes of African American identity. Through her use of silhouettes, she challenges perceptions of Black bodies by portraying them in exaggerated, grotesque forms — such as the “mammy” caricature and the hypersexualized “Jezebel.” Her technique, rooted in 18th- and 19th-century portraiture, reduces these figures to outlines, stripping away detail and complexity.

“This is a major concern of hers, a major tool of hers to think about how race relations from the time of slavery in the United States to today are fueled by the idea that African Americans were evolutionary different,” said Diane Mullin, senior curator at the Weisman, at the press preview. 

Walker’s silhouettes are overlaid onto Homer’s engravings from his Harper’s Weekly Civil War illustrations, visually disrupting the original scenes to highlight historical omissions and ongoing realities of racial oppression in the United States.

The exhibit’s opening reception on Saturday, September 28, will feature shadow puppetry by Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop at 1 p.m., followed by a keynote lecture at 3:30 p.m. by art historian Gwendolyn DuBois Shaw, titled “Kara Walker, Winslow Homer, Blackness, and AI.” 

Correction: “Rosette” is produced and presented by New Arab American Theater Works.