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Sudan in Focus: Memory and Visions
Screening + Talk

Saturday 2 March at 12pm
Rich Mix, London E1 6LA
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Curator: Frédérique Cifuentes

 

An afternoon conversation between Sudanese women artists from a range of artistic practices including cinema, photography, craftsmanship and literature.

 

This special event will take the public through a visual journey of Sudan’s beautiful cultural diversity and multiple artistic identities. Be with us to explore themes of love for fragrances, rituals, and resistance with sonic, audio-visual and sensory interludes.

 

Film screening:

Heroic Bodies, directed by Sara Suliman

Sudan, 2022, 96 minutes. The story of the development of women’s rights in Sudan is told through unique archive material and interviews with activists. We see and hear how women have been oppressed, ignored and abused for centuries, and what has changed.

 

Guest Speakers:

Sara El-Nager

Nasra Mamoun

Aisha Sharife

Safeguarding Sudan's Living Heritage

Sara Suliman

3IEB X AWAN: Decolonising Fashion
Curator: Dania Arafeh 
Thursday 7 March at 7pm
The Mosaic Rooms, London SW5 0SW

An evening of reflection and connection, guided by the narratives of female Palestinian voices.

 

Four designers will explore the theme of 'decolonising fashion' within the context of the current times. Followed by sonic resist-ance, Karmel Sabri will debut a sound collage that layers sound, songs, and words in response to Gaza, and Bint Mbareh will play a short improved piece rooted in archival research exploring the social context of '3eib'.

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Designers: Mai Zarkawi, Leena Sobeih, Dana Khoury and Karmel Sabri

Reading Gaza!
Nora Parr and Guests

Saturday 9 March at 11am
Rich Mix, London E1 6LA
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Join us as we share powerful writings from Gaza during this latest atrocity, and read it within its longer literary history.

 

A far cry from the sense that silence is the most eloquent tribute to atrocity, Palestinian writing - including today’s writing from Gaza - speaks powerfully and eloquently to events of the day. The writing stings of the scope and magnitude of the loss, of determination for survival, of anger that such a crime could be committed in plain sight, and of love - for what is lost, for what remains, and for the inevitable future.

 

Curator: Nora Parr

Panellists: Nora Parr, Bayan Haddad and Basma Ghalayini.

 

Nora Parr is a Research Fellow at the University of Birmingham and the Center for Lebanese Studies. She works on Palestinian, Arabic, and Postcolonial literature. She leads the Palestine Case Study with the Rights for Time research network, and with her project partner the Palestine Trauma Center in Gaza, is working to offer expanded definitions of trauma that can speak better to ongoing experiences of harm. Her first book Novel Palestine: Nation through the works of Ibrahim Nasrallah came out last moth from the University of California Press. Her reading today is from this work.

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Bayan Haddad is an instructor of English Literature at Birzeit University, Palestine. Bayan was a HESPAL scholar to the UK, and holds an MA in Comparative Literature from the University of Edinburgh. Bayan’s current research suggests a postcolonial comparative literary reading of Northern Ireland and Palestine. The project examines pieces of fiction written after the temporal transitions of the Belfast Agreement and the Oslo Accords and seeks to interrogate the ways in which the texts reconsider the relationship of memory, language and structures to communicate collective trauma in each site.

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Basma Ghalayini is an Arabic translator and interpreter and has previously translated short fiction for the KFW Stifflung series, Beirut Short Stories, published on addastories.org, as well as for Comma Press projects, such as Banthology, The Book of Cairo and The Book of Ramallah. She is series editor on all Comma Press’s Arabic titles, and in 2021 was co-editor, with Rasha Abdulhadi, of Strange Horizon’s Special Palestinian Edition. She has written for the New York Times and was born and grew up in the Gaza strip.

Arab Women PublishersDiversity and Challenges
Saturday 9 March at 1pm
Rich Mix, London E1 6LA
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Join us for a discussion with five industry experts about the latest trends in publishing.

 

We will be highlighting the adaptation of books into other formats, opening a debate between various challenges that publishers encounter on a global scale — with a focus on small and medium-sized publishing houses which face tough competition from digital platforms such as social media, online news aggregators, and self-publishing platforms.

 

Speakers & Panellists:

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Nada Sabet: Founder Liblib Publishing

Nadine Kaadan: Children's book author and illustrator

Lynn Gaspard: Publisher and Managing Director, Saqi Books

Feda Shtia: CEO and Founder of Sunono Publishing House

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Nariman Youssef (Moderator) literary translator and translation consultant

Gaza Reborn: A Foot on Earth, a Hand in the Sky
Saturday 9 March at 3pm
Rich Mix, London E1 6LA
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In a time marked by urgency, scarcity, resilience, and hope for Gaza, Arab Women Artist Now (AWAN), in collaboration with Architects for Gaza, will bring together architects from the Arab world.

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The exhibition reconstructs the reality of the besieged, fractured Gazan landscape. Arab women architects employ architecture, drawings, and visual media as tools to narrate, heal, reinterpret and revive the identity of the city.

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With a foot on the earth and a hand in the sky – their work attempts to both reclaim the city and asserts Gazan’s right to return to their homes.

 

In this talk, we will explore several questions while thinking and re-reading Gaza:

  • Why is it important to reimagine and dream?

  • How to deal with a city when the whole fabric has collapsed?

  • How to rethink the notion of home when the relationship between street, neighbourhood and room is blurred?

  • Can we re-read emptiness, ruins, and rubble as powerful symbols of resilience, transformation, and memory?

  • Can we see them as canvases for rebuilding and reimagining?

 

Speakers and Panellists:

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Minerva Fadel (PhD Candidate) - The notion of home, and the significance of materials and materiality within the context of memory, culture, and colonialism

Hala Alnaji (PhD Candidate) - with a Foot on Earth and a Hand in the Sky, how can mapping and counter-mapping offer a new reading towards reconstruction?

Zein Elsharaf Wahbeh

Muna Dajani 

Luma Darakeh 

 

The panel talk will be followed by a discussion moderated by Samir Pandya and Dr Nasser Golzari from the University of Westminster 

Tale Tonic: Artists and Curator Talk
Saturday 16 March at 2pm
The Africa Centre, London SE1 0BL

A central thematic focus of the “tale tonic” exhibition is challenging longstand-ing notions of a singular, authoritative interpretation or meaning imposed on perception.

 

Through their respective practices, Egyptian Artists Nada Elkalaawy and Marianne Fahmy move between the metaphorical and literal visualizations of narratives. Moderated by curator Hanya Elghamry, Elkalaawy will discuss the exhibited works in the space, while Fahmy joins online from Egypt.

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