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Daniel Flounders

Multidisciplinary, Multidisciplinary Art, Painting, Visual / Media

I am a socio-political printmaker who represents daily personal experiences, image associations, and representations of Islamophobia. I see printmaking as a community-based, conversational, and approachable form of art-making. My work is representative of a man amidst change: conversion to a new way of life, new religious practice, marriage, and reflecting on my familial relationships before and after conversion. Though I converted to Islam after moving to Baltimore, MD in 2019, I had an early interest since high school in my childhood bedroom in Allentown, PA. Culturally, my transformation is an oddity within Euro-American society and my original Irish Roman Catholic roots.

My work pulls from formal mark-making methods to hide the medium of print by mimicking marker, ink wash, and crayon textures. I use symbolic and iconographic imagery to portray my experiences within Euro-Catholic roots, dismantling and unlearning what I was taught, and rebuilding a practice of my own through Islam with the support of my Muslim wife. I use primary colors to introduce unfamiliar audiences to content that is new to me as well (as a recent covert to Islam) just as a child would be introduced to these colors for the first time.

I am crafting my own world based on mentally and physically reflecting on my Irish heritage while finding where Islam fits in a community that doesn’t respect the practice of my new faith. With these values of color and printmaking in mind, the medium lends itself well to sharing stories outside of my Euro-Catholic American heritage.

About the Artist

Dan Talib Latif Flounders is a Baltimore-based Muslim printmaker and designer. He was a 2021 Denbo Fellow in Printmaking at Pyramid Atlantic (Hyattsville, MD) and has completed printmaking apprenticeships at Studio1026 (Philadelphia, PA) and Brick + Mortar Design Studio (Easton, PA). He is now a studio member of Current Space, a gallery in Baltimore City. Flounders has exhibited work nationally at Gormley Gallery (Baltimore, MD), John Hopkins University, Maryland Institute College of Art, Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library (Washington D.C.), Philadelphia University, Pyramid Atlantic, Notre Dame of Maryland University, Space1026, and Brick + Mortar Gallery. He holds a BFA in Design and Printmaking from Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Flounders converted to Islam in his formative years after moving to North Philadelphia for undergraduate school, learning the cultural impact, religious practice, and witnessing Islam in action. Seeing the benefits and influences of men like Malcolm X, Louis Farrakhan, and simply friends in his community of Germantown Philadelphia, Flounders quickly learned about Islam from firsthand sources rather than what is popularly spewed in the news and pop culture. His latest work reflects on his Irish Roman Catholic upbringing, his new marriage in Islam, and finding his own space within Islam between his family and ever-changing future.

Daniel Flounders website Personal Website Daniel Flounders website Fellowship Website

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