MIMI is an artist-led residency in Morocco that invites Arab and Jewish artists to come together for creative exchange, inquiry, and collaboration. Founded on friendship and a shared lineage of art practice and critical engagement, MIMI seeks to offer artists a space for facing our moment, asking difficult questions, and imagining new possibilities.
MIMI acknowledges histories and ongoing realities of displacement, conflict, and genocide, and explores what collaborative art-making might do in a world of interconnected suffering. This collaboration recognizes the historical significance of allyship in movements that resist systemic injustice and institutionalized oppression. In the Arab and Jewish context that is most pressingly an occupation that has grave consequences for both peoples.
The residency is committed to fostering an environment where collaboration is an active practice of co-creation, mutual listening, and experimentation. At the heart of MIMI is the belief that art has the capacity to bridge disparate lived experiences and to generate hope. MIMI provides artists with the time, place, and collective container in which to think, create, and dream.
Structured into the residency are prompts to spark collaborative practice, invitational readings, shared meals, and time for participants to discuss their work and experiences with each other. Co-founders Reem Rahim and Maya Pindyck will be on site to facilitate the residency.
The MIMI residency is located 15 minutes outside of Marrakech, Morocco, in Reem’s family’s Dariana property. The pilot residency will run from June 13–22, 2026.
The residency is named MIMI after the nickname of a blanket that Maya gifted Reem’s son Ziad when he was a baby, and which became his security blanket. Ziad grew to refer to all soft things as MIMI.
MIMI is also an extension of the name Miriam, suggesting “bitterness” and “living waters”; sister to the Latin name Mira, meaning “wonderful”; an Italian pet form of Maria, which may have roots in Ancient Egyptian, evoking “love” or “beloved.”
Finally, MIMI holds a quiet echo of “me me” to which we wonder, like owls, “who who?”
FOUNDING
MIMI is co-founded by Maya Pindyck and Reem Rahim, poet/artists of Jewish and Arab descent, in collaboration with artist and educator Carla Repice. For over thirty years they have studied art theory and practice with shared mentors, Rose Shakinovsky and Claire Gavronsky, whose teachings have inspired their work, including this residency.
Maya Pindyck is a poet, artist, scholar, and educator based in Philadelphia. Her work explores relationships between ordinary violence, senses of belonging, and capacities of creative practices. She is the author of three books of poetry including Impossible Belonging, winner of the Philip Levine Prize for Poetry and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award. She is also co-author of the educational textbook A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers. Her visual, collaborative, and community-based work has been shown at the Milton Art Bank, Lewis H. Latimer House Museum, Chashama Gallery, the Clemente, and the Art in Odd Places Public Festival.
Maya received her PhD in English education from Teachers College and her MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College. She has over twenty years of teaching experience across colleges and universities, K-12 schools, and non-profit programs. Currently, she is an associate professor and director of Writing at Moore College of Art & Design.
Reem Rahim (b. Baghdad, Iraq, 1966) is a multi-disciplinary artist and entrepreneur. She received her BS in Biomedical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University; pursued Fine Arts studies at the Museum School and Lorenzo di Medici in Florence, Italy; and attained her MFA from John F. Kennedy’s department of Arts & Consciousness Studies. She co-founded Numi Organic Tea in 1999 and her artwork was featured on the company’s original packaging.
Rahim immigrated with her family to Cleveland, Ohio as a child, where she grew up; she now resides in northern California. Her work is both personal and social-political in nature dealing with themes of oppression, injustice and loss. She finds her way into her subject matter via a call and response with her materials – a place to ideate, while transcending identification. Her aim is to question thinking and compel compassion while balancing harmony and dissonance.
Carla Repice is an artist and educator based in New York City. Her solo and collaborative practice explores themes of indoctrination, accountability, apathy, and care. She has exhibited at Pioneer Works, Equity Gallery, The San Diego Museum of Art, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, and The New‑York Historical Society.
With over thirty years in non‑profits, higher education, and foundations, Carla has built programs that connect art, community, and social change. As part of the founding team at the DreamYard Project in the South Bronx, she launched and directed the Bronx Art Collective, which became a nationally recognized model for how arts education can advance social justice and empower young people. At Bard Graduate Center, she created a groundbreaking public humanities program for high school youth, opening pathways for students to challenge conventions and see themselves as contributors to the cultural field.
Today, she directs education at the Hill Art Foundation, working with teens, interns, and the public to foster research, inquiry, and dialogue through exhibitions and the collection. At MIMI, Carla volunteers as an advisor, helping shape the residency’s vision and programs.
