Twelve Gates Arts

Twelve Gates Arts Twelve Gates Arts, established in 2011, is a non-profit organization based in Philadelphia, Pennsylv

Last week, the gallery filled up for another edition of the Poets’ Studio, featuring Miles E. Johnson.We spent the eveni...
08/01/2026

Last week, the gallery filled up for another edition of the Poets’ Studio, featuring Miles E. Johnson.

We spent the evening reading several deer poems, and the room sat with just how beautiful, and at times visceral, they could be.

Thank you to Miles for such a memorable evening, and to everyone who came out to share it with us.

More Poets’ Studio soon.

We’re 8 days away from the 15th annual BlackStar Film Festival! Next Friday, August 7, BlackStar presents the VOLITION s...
07/30/2026

We’re 8 days away from the 15th annual BlackStar Film Festival!

Next Friday, August 7, BlackStar presents the VOLITION shorts program, claiming our bodies for ourselves, featuring Our Bodies Ours, directed by Sanam Sheriff and Sonali Gulati, alongside shorts from Darryl Daley, Cherish Oteka, Victor Gabriel, and Simone Holland.

Catch it live at 2pm at the Suzanne Roberts Theatre, or tune in virtually from anywhere in the world.

Get your all access or virtual pass: blackstarprojects.org/festival, also accessible through the link in our bio.

Meet us at the 15th annual BlackStar Film Festival this August 6-9 in Philadelphia or tune-in online around the globe! B...
07/24/2026

Meet us at the 15th annual BlackStar Film Festival this August 6-9 in Philadelphia or tune-in online around the globe! BlackStar Projects is celebrating this milestone with a powerful program of films from Black, Brown, and Indigenous artists, panels, and of course, parties. Get your all access or virtual pass: blackstarprojects.org/festival

Also access through the link in our bio.

For 15% of tickets use code: screeningpartner15

Umber Majeed: Digital Handicrafts opens August 7th at Twelve Gates Arts, curated by Sarah Burney.This exhibition digs in...
07/23/2026

Umber Majeed: Digital Handicrafts opens August 7th at Twelve Gates Arts, curated by Sarah Burney.

This exhibition digs into the handmade side of Majeed’s digitally forward practice: Photoshop checkerboards, drop-down menus, and pop-up messages rendered by hand alongside archival imagery pulled from her uncle’s defunct tourism company, an out-of-print Urdu atlas, and vintage Pakistani newspapers. The show also features Zoom in, an augmented reality work that brings her analog, archival, and digital worlds together in real space.

On view August 7 – September 25, 2026 at 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia. Come through the gallery and see it in person.

Umber Majeed: Digital Handicrafts opens August 7th at Twelve Gates Arts, curated by Sarah Burney.This exhibition digs in...
07/23/2026

Umber Majeed: Digital Handicrafts opens August 7th at Twelve Gates Arts, curated by Sarah Burney.

This exhibition digs into the handmade side of Majeed’s digitally forward practice: Photoshop checkerboards, drop-down menus, and pop-up messages rendered by hand alongside archival imagery pulled from her uncle’s defunct tourism company, an out-of-print Urdu atlas, and vintage Pakistani newspapers. The show also features Zoom in, an augmented reality work that brings her analog, archival, and digital worlds together in real space.

On view August 7 - September 25, 2026 at 106 N 2nd St, Philadelphia. Come through the gallery and see it in person.

07/17/2026

One more from A Traveler Weeps, A River Laughs before the final stretch.

At the opening, Philadelphia singer-songwriter Sophia Pradhan, who performs as Doozyah, set Mir Masud-Elias’s poem Second Body Problem to her own composition, and they performed it live together. Watch the two of them bring language and sound together in this clip from that night.

Video credit, Dr. Jamal Elias.

With one week left before the two-week countdown closes on A Traveler Weeps, A River Laughs, today we’re spotlighting Mi...
07/17/2026

With one week left before the two-week countdown closes on A Traveler Weeps, A River Laughs, today we’re spotlighting Mir Masud-Elias’s participatory piece, WHY ARE WE HERE NOW?

A flock of paper boats drifts across the wall toward a corkboard covered in prompts: first they came for, time moves, why are we here now. Visitors are invited to respond in their own words, pin a note to the board, and take a paper boat home while supplies last. Mir treats language as inheritance and offering, something received, transformed, and given back.

Come add your own line before the show closes.

More from Shehrezad Maher’s spotlight, this time on her series of ten watercolors. Each one studies a plastic shopping b...
07/16/2026

More from Shehrezad Maher’s spotlight, this time on her series of ten watercolors.

Each one studies a plastic shopping bag pulled from daily life in her film, The Curfew: thank yous repeated in red, a shoe shop rendered in gold calligraphy on blue, a smiley face, roses in purple and orange, a single blue flower boxed inside a grid. She copies the branding faithfully, warnings, recycling codes, phone numbers and all, turning throwaway packaging into something worth sitting with. Come see them in person before the show closes.

The Bags Nayyer and Ayaan Used to Carry Things Last Summer, watercolor and gouache on paper, 13 x 17 in, 2026.

Two weeks left to catch A Traveler Weeps, A River Laughs, and today’s spotlight lands on Shehrezad Maher’s work, the ful...
07/16/2026

Two weeks left to catch A Traveler Weeps, A River Laughs, and today’s spotlight lands on Shehrezad Maher’s work, the full wall of watercolors alongside her film.

Ten small paintings recreate the plastic shopping bags that carry daily life, thank yous printed in Urdu and English, flowers, smiley faces, corner store logos. Around the corner, The Curfew plays on loop, an elderly woman and a young man moving through quiet, fluorescent-lit hallways. Maher traces how colonial legacies mutate across generations, how a distant inherited past infiltrates the rhythms of a life built elsewhere. Stop by the gallery before the show closes.

The Bags Nayyer and Ayaan Used to Carry Things Last Summer, watercolor and gouache on paper, 13 x 17 in, 2026.

The Curfew, single-channel video, color, sound, 19 minutes, 2025.

More of sāgar kāmath’s American Dream Series… stop by the gallery to see these works before the exhibition closes on Jul...
07/15/2026

More of sāgar kāmath’s American Dream Series… stop by the gallery to see these works before the exhibition closes on July 24th!

the Show must go on
Indigo Ink, Cochineal Ink, Liquid Graphite Watercolor, Acrylic Ink, Natural Pigment, Gum Arabic, Silverpoint, Gouache, on Yupo with UV Varnish mounted on Gatorboard
24”x36”
2026

Peacocking in the Limelight
Indigo Ink, Cochineal Ink, Liquid Graphite Watercolor, Acrylic Ink, Natural Pigment, Gum Arabic, Gouache, on Yupo with UV Varnish mounted on Gatorboard
24”x36”
2026

in the Pursuit of a Dream
Indigo Ink, Cochineal Ink, Liquid Graphite Watercolor, Acrylic Ink, Natural Pigment, Gum Arabic, Silverpoint, Gouache, on Yupo with UV Varnish mounted on Gatorboard
24”x36”
2026

As you wish!
Indigo Ink, Cochineal Ink, Liquid Graphite Watercolor, Acrylic Ink, Natural Pigment, Gum Arabic, Gouache, on Yupo, with UV Varnish mounted on Gatorboard
24”x36”
2026

Address

106 N 2nd Street
Philadelphia, PA
19106

Opening Hours

Wednesday 11am - 5pm
Thursday 11am - 5pm
Friday 11am - 5pm
Saturday 11am - 5pm

Telephone

+12152538578

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