2016
The University of Houston installs permanent VBB archives that chronicle the organization’s ongoing history.
2015
VBB is featured in Houston History, a quarterly magazine published by the Center for Public History at the University of Houston. The feature story is accompanied by a month-long exhibition of VBB’s archived materials at The Heritage Society Museum Gallery in downtown Houston.
2015
Working with editors Margot Backus and Maria Gonzalez and layout artist Joshua Turner, VBB publishes <i>BORDERLINES Volume One</i> and <i>Volume Two</i>, that contain art from Living Room Art shows as well as essays, poems and interviews from border regions.
2014
UH History professor Kairn Klieman teaches a public history graduate level course that focuses on the development of VBB and Sarwar’s history as an activist and artist.
2012-13
Sarwar develops <i>BORDERLINES</i>, a project that is expanded beyond Houston and Karachi to explore border issues between North America and select South Asian countries (Bangladesh, India, Pakistan).
2013
Sarwar is awarded Artist-in-Residence at the Mitchell Center for the Arts (University of Houston), where she develops her What is Home? project.
2012
VBB is awarded its first National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) grant through which Sarwar collaborates with Houston-based and Karachi based-artists to create two productions, Women Under Siege and Homes and Histories, that explore how religious extremism impacts women and how the slavery of black communities affected both Houston and Karachi.
2010-2013
Sarwar donates her 1992 Honda Civic hatchback to VBB and collaborates with artist Eric Hester to create an Art Car, Revolution, that contains nine television screens, a microphone, images of inspiring artists including Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Patti Smith, and that is decorated with Pakistani truck art motifs from Karachi. In 2011, the car wins a Freedom of Speech award at Houston’s legendary Orange Show Art Car Parade.