Once a month throughout the 2025-26 academic year, Slow Digest will feature an episode of C21’s 6.5 Minutes With…C21 podcast series, produced by C21 Graduate Fellows Jamee N. Pritchard and Yuchen Zhao.
This special extended episode of 6.5 Minutes with C21 is co-hosted by Jamee Pritchard (C21 Graduate Fellow) and Anna Mansson McGinty (UWM Professor of Geography and Women’s and Gender Studies/C21 Faculty Advisor) in conversation with Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist Amal Azzam whose work moves across screen printing, fiber, photography, and found objects to explore identity, belonging, and creative freedom. The focus of the episode is the layered relationship between artistic practice and slow care.
At the center of the conversation is Azzam’s articulation of art as both inquiry and offering, a method for navigating the complexities of being a Palestinian American, Muslim, and first-generation artist in a city shaped by segregation and uneven access to cultural institutions. Rather than waiting for entry, Azzam describes building her own pathways, most notably through Fanana Banana, a collective that creates space for Muslim, Arab, and MENA artists in Milwaukee. What emerges is a model of creative practice grounded not only in expression, but in community formation and mutual recognition.
Azzam reflects on how slow care has shaped her creative process through less urgency, more attentiveness, and a willingness to let ideas unfold over time. As she explains, “Slow care is giving yourself permission to slow things down when needed… and being okay with the fluctuation of energy.” This ethos carries through her work, where complex political and personal histories are rendered with clarity and accessibility, inviting audiences to critically look, analyze, and reflect. This conversation offers a thoughtful meditation on what it means to create, to belong, and to care, slowly, deliberately, and in relation to others.
For more information and insight in Azzam’s mural art, see Slow Digest: Murals of Community Care, written by Anna Mansson McGinty.
The views, information, and opinions expressed on 6.5 Minutes with C21 are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily represent the views, policies, or positions of the Center for 21st Century Studies, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, or the University of Wisconsin System.
Notes:
Guest: Amal Azzam, Milwaukee-based interdisciplinary artist, co-founder of Fanana Banana
Host: Jamee Pritchard, Graduate Fellow, Center for 21st Century Studies (C21)
Co-Host: Anna Mansson McGinty, Lead Faculty Advisor (C21), Associate Professor of Geography and Women’s & Gender Studies (UWM)