Hi, I’m Hannah Shambroom, and I’m the exhibition coordinator at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. Lookout: MISS CHELOVE is the first in a series of public art installations on the exterior of the museum during the building’s renovation. Reseeded: A Forest Floor Flow is a four-story mural printed on mesh fabric, created for NMWA by D.C.-based muralist, designer, illustrator, and art director MISS CHELOVE, whose work can be found throughout the D.C. metro area and internationally.

In her vibrant murals, MISS CHELOVE often combines local and biographical storytelling with the tools and methods of graffiti and street art to explore themes including women’s empowerment, nature, Indigenous cultures, and music. In Reseeded: A Forest Floor Flow, her image of a woman immersed in botanicals native to the islands of Indonesia alludes to the resurgence of the natural world during the pandemic and the critical roles of women in ecological activism.

Keep listening to this audio tour to hear more from the artist about her work.

Peace. This is MISS CHELOVE, creator of Reseeded: A Forest Floor Flow. As a first-generation American woman of color, my roots lie halfway around the world in Java, Indonesia. This separation has forged a long tether connecting me to my ancestral home, where animism dictates that spirits inhabit the volcanoes, forest, jungle, and sea, from the exotic bird of paradise to the mighty orangutan, to the tumbling, fragrant kamboja, or frangipani, blossoms. Reseeded speaks to being planted again to start anew. For this piece, I was moved by three central themes: the act of being physically replanted through migration or displacement, the regeneration of our precious environment, and personal reinvention as we evolve through life’s chapters and experience post-traumatic growth.

This theme of regeneration is especially present during the COVID pandemic. If the adage is true—that only through struggle do we truly grow—the coming expansion will be something for the record books.

Kamboja Prayer. This is an interior mural located at Dua Coffee DC, the city’s only Indonesian-owned restaurant, located at McPherson Square in downtown Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House. This shop opened their doors just before the COVID pandemic landed in the area and is the American outpost of specialty café Dua Coffee in Jakarta, Indonesia, where my family’s from.

This composition explores the intersection of Javanese and Western identity and is anchored by a central female figure with layers of arched botanicals serving as a backdrop. Her hands are outstretched with palms up, in a position of prayer and reverence. In her hoodie we see the parang batik design, typically worn by the royal class within the Kraton, or palace, in Yogyakarta, central Java. She wears a traditional headdress, which includes the fragrant kamboja, or frangipani, flower. Wisps of smoke surround her, intertwined with the coffee botanicals like wafts of incense smoke.

Guardians of the Four Directions is an exterior mural in downtown Washington, D.C., installed on the north façade of Hotel Zena, which faces Thomas Circle. Painted in March 2020, just as the COVID pandemic began, this is the first and only large-scale mural located within D.C.’s grand traffic circles. The mural spans the entire width of the building, rising six stories up, covering about half of the structure’s height.

Two multiethnic, intergenerational warrior women stand guard over the city, protectors of Mother Nature, juxtaposed with lotus botanicals and sweeping swirls of clouds. My vision for this mural was to celebrate the strength and resilience of womanhood, which exponentially increases when we band together as sisters. With this concept, I hope to remind the viewer that women are continuing to evolve their power as leaders and agents of change—that this earth needs us, and we must fight to preserve the beauty on which we are privileged to stand. This air, this soil, these trees, this glorious water, and these magnificently integrated ecosystems are truly part of us. We cannot exist without one another.

Bonus Fact: A companion piece to this mural, entitled Of the Sky, From Water, Over Land, Through Air, hangs in the hotel’s board room on the second floor. Its features are two warrior ladies with a third companion, and it’s constructed of layers of die-cut, organically shaped pieces of wood. I hope you get to see that one, too.

Multiple doors surround her head, representing the many choices urban teens face. A pair of the girl’s friends hover over her head waiting for the next hangout. Curving lines pass through the open doorway near her ear, flowing in from the world of her subconscious. These lines symbolize the constant flow of thoughts and concern teens have. If you look long enough, the title of the piece emerges, trailing across her crown starting at the top left of the wall: All My Hopes & Dreams.

My muse for this piece is a great sister-friend of mine, Jamilla Okubo, a talented designer and multidisciplinary artist, from Washington, D.C.

Every Day I See Something New. This exterior mural is a favorite because it was my first public art commission back in 2011. The design explores various symbols and scenes from in and around the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Over an almost solid black background, the elements fit together to create a pattern of bright, bold color, but if one views this mural for long enough, a message emerges: “Every Day I See Something New.”

The purpose of this mural was to combine elements from the Adams Morgan neighborhood with D.C.’s rich musical heritage, the local natural environment, Ethiopian and Salvadoran ethnic populations, D.C. street style, and popular food spots. The simplified forms are fun and engaging for children but have cultural significance that adults can connect with as well. Overall, this mural was conceptualized with the children of the neighborhood in mind. The playground for Marie Reed Elementary School sits directly across the street from the mural site, so I wanted to create a design that could be seen day after day and hopefully still remain fresh—a simplified, sort of “Where’s Waldo” of imagery to get lost within. As the title indicates, I hoped people would find a new detail each time they walked by.

You Are Welcome is an exterior mural located in Columbia Heights at Unity Health Care’s Upper Cardozo location. This mural was painted in summer 2018 for the MuralsDC project.

This multiethnic, multigenerational composition is meant to uplift and brighten those coming to the bustling community health clinic. This mural design reflects the over-thirty-year-old organization’s commitment to serving all, refusing care to no one—a positive community space where hope and bright futures can be realized.

Set in the foreground of a grand sunset, a grandmother makes an offering of a handful of glorious blooms as her granddaughter smiles. The rose symbolizes promise, hope, and new beginnings. The purple thistle is also a symbol of an enlightened person, one who has gained their crown. The color purple also symbolizes dignity, which every patient coming to Unity Health Care deserves.

Many of the clinic’s patients have roots in Central America, Africa, and Asia. In grandmother’s scarf, the greeting “Welcome” is stitched in five languages: English, Spanish, Vietnamese, Swahili, and Amharic. These linguistic touch points are meant to spark a familiar connection with these folks and hopefully help them feel as if they, too, belong here. This detail is not meant to have major prominence, but rather something to be discovered over multiple visits.