For this teach-in, supported by “Decolonial Futures” (UvA), Palestinian-US-based artists, scholars, and activists Aisha Mershani and Qais Assali along with Amsterdam-based mixed-media artist Karmel Sabri will engage in a dynamic, pedagogical discussion on how art can be employed as a resistive tool to document, trouble, and reimagine life and death in Palestine under Israeli occupation. Sharing insights and images from their artistic practices, all three artists-speakers will help us to critically visualize and comment on the violence in Gaza — offering a unique cultural and social perspective on war, genocide, and the resistive work that becomes possible through artistic archiving. 

Speakers:

1. Aisha Mershani (Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Gettysburg College, USA)
2. Qais Assali (Professor of the Practice, Graphic Arts, Tufts University, USA)
3. Karmel Sabri (Independent Artist)

Chair:  Jan Mendes (UvA Sociology)

About the Speakers:

Aisha Mershani (Assistant Professor, Interdisciplinary Studies, Gettysburg College, USA)

Mershani’s work traces histories of civil resistance through photography and documentary film practices. Her photography focuses on the popular struggle against the Apartheid wall in the occupied West Bank and the Palestinian struggle to live on their lands. From 2003-2022 Mershani focused her subject on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. She has photographed military checkpoints, popular demonstrations, house demolitions, destroyed villages, and the daily lives of Palestinians living under the violence of the Israeli occupation. 

Qais Assali (Professor of the Practice, Graphic Arts, Tufts University, USA)

Assali is an interdisciplinary artist/designer born in Palestine in 1987 and raised in the UAE before returning to Palestine in 2000. Assali uses visual analogy, translation, substitution, and appropriation strategies to rethink forms of communication architectures. Assali taught in Visual Communication in several art schools in Palestine and the US. Assali was a 2019-21 Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX. Assali’s work has been exhibited at Hauser & Wirth, NY (2021); Middle East Institute, DC (2021); Station Museum of Contemporary Art, TX (2021); Stamps Gallery, University of Michigan, MI (2021); Toronto Queer Film Festival, Canada (2021), among many others.

Karmel Sabri (Independent Artist)

Sabri is a socially engaged artist and organizer working primarily with installation, printmaking, public interventions, and parties. She is a current candidate of the Disarming Design Master’s program at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam. She creates environments which foster meaningful discussion and encourage community healing of collective colonial traumas. Sabri explores the concept of celebration as a method of resistance through her organization, Dear Gaza 501(c)(3), which from 2015-2019 curated programing, most notably through an annual block party, which provided a platform for artists to engage in a public celebration of Palestinian culture in a context that was never imagined before.