She specializes in translating complex ideas into cohesive design systems, campaigns, and storytelling frameworks for arts and community-focused projects.
In 2017, she founded Pick Up The Flow, a community resource platform that has grown into a widely recognized initiative across New York City’s cultural landscape. Through this work, she has developed visual identities, communication frameworks, and branded systems that support artists via accessible resources, strategic content, and collaborative organizing.
Selwa also curates and produces events for platforms such as BIZAARBAZAAR and 3afak (with Sanna Almajedi), with a focus on community engagement, equity, and the intersection of art and design.
She is the recipient of grants and residencies from NYSCA x Roulette, NYFA x Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment’s Women Fund Grant, the Jerome Foundation, SACEM (France), Issue Project Room, and Harvestworks.
She's been a NTS Radio resident since 2018
Visual Identity, Social Media Management
In 2020, I joined the Music Workers Alliance, an organization created by, for, and in support of independent music workers.
The MWA works to initiate, organize, and sustain collective action that empowers those working independently in the music industry.
My role focused on strengthening the organization’s social media presence by posting daily graphics for ongoing campaigns, organizing musicians in my community, and designing the logo along with various social media assets.
Between 2020 and 2021, I worked on two major campaigns:
1) The Unemployment Campaign, which highlighted daily Pandemic Unemployment Stories from music workers who had lost all income since March 2020 and were unable to return to work due to the shutdown of live performances. Because so many depended on enhanced unemployment benefits, the MWA advocated for the extension of this critical support. I designed all campaign assets and shared them daily on Instagram.
2) A petition calling for Economic Justice in the Digital Domain, which garnered more than 5,000 signatures from musicians across genres, including renowned artists such as Ahmad Jamal, David Lynch, Wayne Shorter, Elvis Costello and Norah Jones.
The MWA works to initiate, organize, and sustain collective action that empowers those working independently in the music industry.
My role focused on strengthening the organization’s social media presence by posting daily graphics for ongoing campaigns, organizing musicians in my community, and designing the logo along with various social media assets.
Between 2020 and 2021, I worked on two major campaigns:
1) The Unemployment Campaign, which highlighted daily Pandemic Unemployment Stories from music workers who had lost all income since March 2020 and were unable to return to work due to the shutdown of live performances. Because so many depended on enhanced unemployment benefits, the MWA advocated for the extension of this critical support. I designed all campaign assets and shared them daily on Instagram.
2) A petition calling for Economic Justice in the Digital Domain, which garnered more than 5,000 signatures from musicians across genres, including renowned artists such as Ahmad Jamal, David Lynch, Wayne Shorter, Elvis Costello and Norah Jones.
Visual Identity, Project Development, Social Media Management
Official Logo (2020-Now)
From 2020 to now, I’ve led the development of PickUpTheFlow (PUTF), a platform that delivers daily grant and job opportunities via Instagram.
I created the entire visual identity and branding system.
In 2024, I introduced a video interview series featuring creatives from the PUTF community and conducted interviews at Dripping Festival and New Inc 2025 (New Museum).
Pick Up The Flow (PUTF) is a platform and community dedicated to expanding equitable access to opportunities within the arts, culture, and creative industries. Our mission is to make information transparent, accessible, and actionable for artists, cultural workers, academics, and organizations worldwide.
Organizational Background: Founded in 2017, PUTF began as a private, invitation-only Facebook group connecting musicians and creatives in NYC. The platform emphasized trust, peer-to-peer exchange, and community accountability, allowing members to share professional opportunities, resources, housing, and technical knowledge.
PUTF has since evolved into a public-facing platform responding to ongoing shifts in the cultural sector, including labor conditions, funding access, and visibility within creative industries.
Programs and Activities: In addition to digital publishing, PUTF organizes public programs such as workshops, radio broadcasts, artist talks, community markets, and swap events. Partners include MoMA PS1, The Lot Radio, H0l0, PTP x LQQK Studio, Bossa Nova Civic Club, Mood Ring, among others.
Current Platform:
Instagram: 55K+ followers, daily posts
Newsletter: Weekly Substack edition, 6K+ subscribers (~60% open rate)
Website: Public opportunity listings updated daily (20K+/monthly visitors)
Private FB group (Marketplace): 2100+ members (less active)
Discord: 400+ members (less active)
Community & Audience: Global audience of artists, cultural workers, academics, nonprofits, and institutions.
Selected Partners & Supporters: Queens Council on the Arts, Times Square Arts, The Joyce Foundation, PepsiCo, Printed Matter, Inc., e-flux, The Laundromat Project, Park Avenue Armory, Institute for Public Architecture, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art, Staten Island Arts, Mexican Summer, Apexart, Alfred University, Danspace Project, Woodward Residency, Abrons Arts Center, Fractured Atlas, MIT Lab Poetic Justice, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Studio Museum in Harlem, Storefront for Art and Architecture, Pratt Institute.
Thesis Book Design, The New School
File not found is a research project that investigates the long-term reliability and stability of our digital networks. As technology is changing at a faster pace than ever the compatibility between the container to store information and the connecting systems is continuously at stake. As a consequence, we feel that our digital existence is only temporary.
File not found looks at the ephemerality of the url and investigates experimental ways to materialize it in our analog environment. The first approach of a series of events is a sound performance that “infects” the human habitat through the sonification of malicious URLs.
Virtual content is exploited ‘in real life’, contained in one space, sound and the audience merge into one sonic event.
Banned from the Internet, the malicious urls are bouncing randomly against the walls of the space. They are no longer dead in the immaterial matter called the cloud, but as they regenerate themselves they become part of reality, they embrace the audience while creating in them a sense of total confusion.The performance is documented in a collection of printed books which are independent of digital archiving technology.
Each book uses the page as surface for infection; the urls find back their materiality through a process of infection.
In 2017, this project was featured in Self Storage NYC, an exhibition organized by Flux Factory.
File not found looks at the ephemerality of the url and investigates experimental ways to materialize it in our analog environment. The first approach of a series of events is a sound performance that “infects” the human habitat through the sonification of malicious URLs.
Virtual content is exploited ‘in real life’, contained in one space, sound and the audience merge into one sonic event.
Banned from the Internet, the malicious urls are bouncing randomly against the walls of the space. They are no longer dead in the immaterial matter called the cloud, but as they regenerate themselves they become part of reality, they embrace the audience while creating in them a sense of total confusion.The performance is documented in a collection of printed books which are independent of digital archiving technology.
Each book uses the page as surface for infection; the urls find back their materiality through a process of infection.
In 2017, this project was featured in Self Storage NYC, an exhibition organized by Flux Factory.
Digital & Print Media
Work spanning branding, creative direction, product design and digital artworks. Selected Works: Babel, Scott Avery (Amani Olu), Bizaarbazaar, RFT & Adalah NYC