Once a month throughout the 2025-26 academic year, Slow Digestwill feature an episode of C21’s 6.5 Minutes With…C21 podcast series, produced by C21 Graduate Fellows Jamee N. Pritchard and Yuchen Zhao.
In this episode of 6.5 Minutes with C21, multimedia artist Amelia Bader reflects on art as a practice of identity, resistance, and community care. Working across painting, murals, Arabic calligraphy, and digital design, Bader understands her work as both deeply personal and collectively rooted. It is an expression of her identity as a Palestinian Muslim American woman and a way of creating space for others to see themselves reflected. Her practice moves between the intimate and the public, from detailed canvas work to large-scale murals that center visibility, unity, and cultural presence within Milwaukee’s Muslim communities.
Throughout the conversation, Bader returns to art as a form of storytelling that carries history and that centers marginalized voices, inviting onlookers space for reflection. Her mural We Are the Power of Society (see Slow Digest: Murals of Community Care), brings together a range of cultural identities within the Muslim community, emphasizing both difference and connection as sources of strength.
In defining how slow care connects to her work, Bader describes a practice shaped by patience, intention, and attention to process. She said, “Slow care…is consciously taking the time to prioritize quality and dignity and being present…rather than just trying to achieve something as soon as possible.”
For Bader, slow care is not only about how art is made, but how one moves through the world, making space for rest, reflection, and the kinds of creative work that sustain both self and community.
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: Amelia Bader, Milwaukee-based multimedia artist and muralist
Host: Jamee Pritchard, Graduate Fellow, Center for 21st Century Studies (C21)