As part of UK’s Refugee Week, the Socially Engaged Art Salon (Brighton) in collaboration with Bilna’es and Printed Matter (New York) is showing at the BMECP Centre and online the exhibition For the Unsettled World to Come.
BMECP Centre, 10/A Fleet Street, Brighton BN1 4ZE
Opening hours: Monday-Friday 10am-5pm
The exhibition highlights the daily and continuous struggle of Palestinians, who are the world’s oldest unsettled refugee population and who fled or were expelled from their country over the course of the 1947–49 Palestine war and the 1967 Six-Day War. In 2019, more than 5.6 million Palestinian refugees were registered with the United Nations.
The exhibition, initially curated by Bilna'es* and exhibited at Printed Matter** NY in 2021 showed works of twenty-three artists from around the world calling to globalize the intifada, making the Palestinian uprising in honour to all people struggling against entangled systems of oppression and dispossession.
Mobilizing networks of solidarity and resistance, these artworks have been shared, hashtagged, and circulated globally in the fight against oppression and colonialism. The artists included are from Palestine and beyond, with each contribution amplifying the Palestinian resistance to displacement and the ongoing struggles within occupied and divided lands.
With contributions by: BLKMOODYBOI, The International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings, Haneen Nazzal, Darina Jabr, Golrokh Nafisi, Lena Siksik, Lamia Abukhadra, Haitham Haddad - Studio MNJNK, Mooni Studio, Fana’ Collective, Data for Black Lives (designed by Studio 45 Turbo), June LS, Haitham Ennasr, Layan Attari, MaryAnn Jaraisy, Samir Harb, Wendy Elisheva Somerson.
*The initial exhibition was curated by Bilna’es (‘in the negative’ in Arabic) with Yara Abbas, Nora Akawi, and Fawz Kabra. Bilna’es is a‘disciplinary’ publishing platform that supports artists in Palestine and beyond. — bilnaes.com. The title of this project is borrowed from Lamia Abukhadra’s For the Unsettled World to Come (2021)
** Printed Matter, Inc., the world’s leading non-profit organization dedicated to the dissemination, understanding and appreciation of artists’ books. The posters are available for purchase in limited quantities from PM’s online shop. Proceeds from sales will be donated to alQaws, a Palestinian grassroots organization advocating for LGBTQ communities and sexual & gender diversity in Palestinian society. Retail is $20 each.
Ig @printedmatterinc
BLKMOODYBOI
BLKMOODYBOI is a Non-binary trans Afro-Indigenous self taught illustrator that centres Black and Brown trans people in their art. Their practice is based solely on collectivity/ community, lived experience and the power of the proletariat. Understanding art as a collective process of knowledge sharing and reciprocity. A tool for revolution. (@Blkmoodyboi ) Purchase print
Darina Jabr Darina Jabr is a 22-year-old visual artist born and based in Jerusalem who enjoys making animations, posters and illustrations. (@darinajabr) Purchase print
Data for Black Lives (designed by Studio 45 Turbo)
Data for Black Lives is a movement of activists, organizers, and scientists committed to the mission of using data to create concrete and measurable change in the lives of Black people. @data4blacklives @45turbo Purchase print
Fana' Collective
Fana' is a collective based in Ramallah, Palestine. The name comes from multiple roots in the Arabic language, one being the annihilation of the self or the re-birth of the new self in Sufism. We aim to deconstruct and deproduce truth in social, philosophical and cultural activity. We wish to uncover the processes in which ‘things’ are created or uncreated rather than only posing the end product of these ‘things.’
Golrokh Nafisi
Golrokh Nafisi is an Illustrator, animator, and puppet maker that experiments with performances in public space. Nafisi works through bodies and ideologies to imagine and shape new works forms of collective action. @golrokh.nafisi Purchase print 1 Purchase print 2 Purchase print 3
Haitham Ennasr
Haitham Ennasr is a Palestinian multi-disciplinary artist and designer, their works include experimental videogames, drawings, paintings, objects, and text. Haitham’s practice is based on internationalist revolutionary movements and can be viewed through the vernacular of Sci-Fi-Folk. @fallahipunk Purchase print
Haitham Haddad - Studio MNJNK
Haitham Haddad (b. 1989) is a Palestinian illustrator, visual artist, and graphic designer based in Haifa. @studio.mnjnk Purchase print
Haneen Nazzal
Haneen Nazzal is a Palestinian Visual Artist based in Ramallah, Palestine. She graduated with a BA degree in architecture from Al-Najah National University, in 2014. After practicing architecture for 4 years, Haneen decided to follow her passion and switched to visual arts. She views graphic arts as a form of resistance and a medium to support the Palestinian struggle for freedom and justice. She has recently stood out as a leading artist in the defense of Palestinian rights and her illustrations have set their mark on the 2021 Palestinian uprising. @hneenzzal Purchase print 1 Purchase print 2
The International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-Imperialist Feelings
This image is drawn from Until our lands are free, a Globalize the Intifada zine (summer 2021) organized by International Imagination of Anti-National Anti-imperialist Feelings. The document builds on ten years of movement work in the city, nourished in turn by many generations and legacies of struggle from around the world. It weaves together principles, practices, and lessons of anti-capitalist, decolonial, abolitionist, and anti-imperialist political formations, and operates autonomously from any sectarian organizations, political parties, state regimes, or nonprofit entities. @decolonizethisplace Purchase print
Indigenous Peoples Everywhere Resist Settler Colonialism
June LS
June LS is a two-spirit, multidisciplinary artist living on Ohlone Land in Oakland, California. They design and print posters and agitational propaganda for Tenant And Neighborhood Councils (a Bay Area tenants’ union) and for other political purposes. @situationniste Purchase print
Lamia Abukhadra
Lamia Abukhadra is a Palestinian American artist currently based in Beirut and Minneapolis. Using Palestine as a microcosm of urgency and resistance, she embeds speculative frameworks, intuited from practices present long before the settler colonial project, which bring to light intimate and historical connections, poetic occurrences, and generative possibilities of survival, mutation, and self-determination. Lamia graduated from the University of Minnesota with a BFA in interdisciplinary studio art in 2018 and is a 2019-2020 Home Workspace Program Fellow at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut as well as a 2021-22 Jan Van Eyck Academie Resident in Maastricht.@lamiaabukhadra Produced by Lamia Abukhadra for Mizna and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
Layan Attari
This poster was designed to accompany a letter from Palestine that was collaboratively written and globally signed by 7,000 artists, writers, musicians, and cultural workers. The letter was inspired by the most significant elements of what has unfolded in Palestine this year, and echoes the expression of a unified Palestinian voice in its struggle for decolonization and justice. againstapartheid.com
lena siksik
lena is a Palestinian cultural worker with a background in graphic design, education, and architecture. She is based in LA until right of return, after which she will go home to Yaffa. Instagram @lenapalestena, Twitter @lenapalestena Produced by lena siksik for JVP BIJOCSM Network (Black Indigenous Jews of Color Sephardim Mizrahim) Purchase print
Mary Ann Jaraisy
Palestinian Graphic artist, freelancer, with more than 25 years experience in design and digital art, based in Amsterdam, Passionate about Arabic typography and calligraphy, and in my free time I’m a Ceramist. @maryanngraph @aswatfreedoms Produced by MaryAnn Jaraisy for Aswat Purchase print
Mooni Studio
Mooni Studio is a design, research and art studio based in Jerusalem/Amsterdam. Their diverse practice is present in both commissioned and self initiated projects. Mooni’s project were featured in the past at various places such as: Dazed France, Ma3azef Magazine, Eye Film Museum, Year Zero etc. @mooni.studio Produced by Mooni Studio for Ma3azef Magazine
Samir Harb
I am an architect, cartoonist, and geographer. In my work, I explore the forms of injustice and how it is articulated in banal materials and day-to-day spaces and human practices. The comic narrative is the medium to talk about politics, space, geography and many subjectivities. These pages are from part of a comic published in Cypher, edition 10, which is an online graphic magazine issued monthly by human rights organisation Frontline Defenders. @samir_harbsss Purchase print 1 Purchase print 2
Wendy Elisheva Somerson
Wendy Elisheva Somerson is an activist, artist, and healer who also helped found the Seattle chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace. @wendyelisheva Purchase print