Author: mara.ahmed

Peterson Kamwathi

Born in 1980 in Nairobi, Peterson Kamwathi is part of a generation of young East African artists whose break with the colonial tutelage that for decades defined the region’s art has afforded the exploration of topics both deeply rooted in Africa’s cultural background and engaged with global contemporary issues.

Peterson’s highly codified, symbolic, conceptual works, whose content and concepts go far beyond local relevance, distance themselves from the usual patterns of reception of figurative art from Kenya. Rendered in thick layers of charcoal, pastel, watercolor, stencils and more recently collage, Peterson’s figures are anonymous, static, almost abstract, a physical presence powerfully pushed to the forefront of the picture plane and the viewer’s attention by dense backgrounds devoid of vanishing points.

His practice, fostering the idea of art as a process-based and time-based project, often creates encapsulated visual archives by exploring contemporary themes in series and in layers, each group of works exploring social, political, personal and institutional structures symbolized through the depiction of the human figure.

Frederick Douglass’ 4th of July Speech is Today’s Must-Read

From Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz: Every 4th of July, my liberal and left friends and family on Facebook, who as I do dislike the patriotic gore, and especially that it celebrates the Declaration of Independence with its vicious slur of the “savages,” meaning Indigenous nations, the Anglo elite and settlers alike barrier to acquiring land and more land with their horizon being the Pacific, invoke Frederick Douglass’s 1852 scalding attack on the celebration.

But, Douglass wasn’t criticizing the concepts written in the Declaration, rather calling out the hypocrisy of the call for freedom while hundreds of thousands of people of African descent lived under chattel slavery, their very bodies viewed as commodities to be traded on the market. He spoke differently, as a patriot, after emancipation, although still fighting for Black inclusion and voting rights.

From Teen Vogue, July 4, 2018:

“Douglass professed striking racism toward indigenous peoples in America. Despite being a staunch abolitionist, Douglass used a kind of racialized othering against indigenous peoples similar to what white supremacists had used against him. In an 1866 speech titled “We Are Here and Want The Ballot-Box,” Douglass spoke to a Philadelphia audience regarding the differences between black Americans and what he called “the Indian.” In an 1866 speech titled “We Are Here and Want The Ballot-Box,” Douglass spoke to a Philadelphia audience regarding the differences between black Americans and what he called “the Indian.”In one particularly brutal section, the abolitionist said, “There is no resemblance in the elements that go to make up the character of a civilized man between the Indian and the negro…[the Indian] sees the ploughshare of your civilization tossing up the bones of his venerated fathers, and he retreats before the onward progress of your civilization…he abhors your fashions, he refuses to adopt them. But not so with the negro.”

This is not to “cancel” Douglass or degrade his contribution to abolition, rather to remind that, as one important book title puts it, “Why You Can’t Teach United States HIstory without American Indians.” Race, racialism explains a great deal about US history and the present crisis of looming white nationalism, but it does not explain US militarism and imperialism. The US hundred years of war against Indigenous Nations to take the continent created the US imperialist armed forces.
Race, then, does not explain why we do not and have never really had an antiwar movement in the US, yes opposition to some specific wars, but anti-war, anti-imperialist mass movements do not last past the specific war. Race and racialism/slavery explain half of the origins of US capitalism, but is incomplete without land, land theft, land sales, real estate, settler-colonialism.

My relatives went to a Catholic school for Native children. It was a place of horrors

Nick Estes: “After the discovery of 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former school for Native children in Canada, it is time to investigate similar abuses in the US. There is so much mourning Native people have yet to do. The full magnitude of Native suffering has yet to be entirely understood, especially when it comes to the nightmarish legacies of American Indian boarding schools. The purpose of the schools was “civilization”, but, as I have written elsewhere, boarding schools served to provide access to Native land, by breaking up Native families and holding children hostage so their nations would cede more territory. And one of the primary benefactors of the boarding school system is the Catholic church, which is today the world’s largest non-governmental landowner, with roughly 177 million acres of property throughout the globe. Part of the evidence of how exactly the church acquired its wealth in North America is literally being unearthed, and it exists in stories of the Native children whose lives it stole, which includes my own family.”

a monster is dead

a monster is dead, but the death and devastation donald rumsfeld unleashed cannot be reversed. wish it could be. one vile monster for thousands, millions of lives. for the water and air that were poisoned, the soil that was contaminated, the children who were born with congenital anomalies and cancers. and let’s not forget the others: dick cheney, george w. bush, tony blair, irving kristol, richard perle, paul wolfowitz, james woolsey, elliot abrams, robert zoellick, richard armitage, john bolton, condoleeza rice, colin powell, judith miller and countless more – neocons and liars, warmongers and imperial intriguers, islamophobes and racists. may their crimes follow them wherever they go. even in hell.

couldn’t post a picture of the genocidal man so here is an artwork by iraqi photographer and artist halim al karim. it’s called ‘lost memory 4.’

the great cat ashworth retires

my friend Cat Ashworth retired yesterday, after teaching film at RIT for 32 years. that RIT didn’t have the grace to thank her for her stellar work over three long decades is appallingly egregious. it speaks to the larger issue of how work performed by women is systematically diminished and erased. how women themselves are routinely invisibilized, ignored, or minimized.

i took a class with cat many years ago. it was a hands-on documentary workshop during the course of which i edited my first doc, ‘the muslims i know’ – the film that made me a filmmaker. how lucky to have landed in cat’s class at such a crucial juncture in my life.

filmmaking was a second career for me so i was much older than the other students. i came to the class with a decisive goal in mind – to edit a feature length film in just a few weeks. there was an urgency to my task which cat understood instinctively. she supported me every way she could, even asking her assistant to teach me how to use keyframes and create motion paths in final cut pro.

not having formally studied filmmaking, i came at it from a different angle. sometimes i wouldn’t know the technical jargon or my ideas would be too unconventional or politically heavy and uncool. cat always sided with me. she never made me feel like i didn’t belong. she wasn’t annoyed by my drive. that set the tone for the way the other students responded to me. although they could be ruthless in their critique, cat made them believe i was doing something worthwhile and meaningful.

initially, i was thinking of hiring someone to do the film’s voiceover, but cat urged me to do it myself – not to hide but rather to embrace the personal nature of the project. the muslims i had interviewed were my people. islamophobia touched them just as it impacted me and my family. it was ok to own that and speak from that vulnerable position. and she was right. one of the most common reactions to the doc is the feedback i get about the voiceover – its warmth and ability to pull audiences in. only because of cat.

at the end of the class, when i screened the rough cut for RIT’s film faculty, the responses i got from some of the most prominent male professors in positions of power were disappointing. one particularly important one told me i shouldn’t use western classical music in the film because it didn’t fit all this talk about islam and muslims. i guess he was expecting some sitar and tabla. talk about orientalism. once again, cat pushed back publicly and also in private, encouraging me to stay with my ideas and in fact commit to them even more. it’s like she could predict the effect the film would have.

i’ve made two other films after it, but 15 years later, ‘the muslims i know’ continues to generate abundant viewership. it’s been integrated into college curriculums and i hear from professors who tell me how they use it in their class.

how many stories like this there must be from cat’s students and colleagues who have benefited from her generosity, attention and brilliance for 32 years. i am not even listing the outstanding work she has produced as an astute filmmaker and artist or her behind-the-scenes efforts to diversify RIT faculty.

thank u cat. we love u. enjoy ur retirement and know that u helped shape many lives and careers.

meeting with naaz

on friday, i caught up with the lovely Fatima Naaz Mustafa in nyc at lucy’s cantina royale (good guac and wraps but v noisy). it was brilliant to hear an accomplished therapist talk about generational trauma, racism and mental health, and the importance of breathing, and feel validated for focusing on these convos in my new film, ‘the injured body.’ thank u naaz for making time in ur whirlwind schedule and connecting. hope the rest of ur trip will be relaxing and peaceful <3

Toni Morrison funded anti-Hamilton play because she hated musical so much

‘Hamilton, the hip-hop-inspired Broadway sensation about Alexander Hamilton’s rise, humanizes the founding fathers in a show that’s considered emblematic of the Obama years. It was viewed through a different lens during the Trump years amid rising racial tensions in America.

…Ishmael Reed has been one of Hamilton’s most ardent critics. In 2019 he told CurrentAffairs.org: “They cast black people in order to defend projects that [black people] might find objectionable. It sort of distracts from the racism of the white historical characters.”’

Black-Palestine solidarity is making its way to Capitol Hill

On May 13, something remarkable happened on the floor of the U.S. Congress: 11 Democratic representatives delivered blunt speeches criticizing Israel for its military assault on Gaza and its crackdown on Palestinian protests in Jerusalem. Perhaps the most powerful speeches came from two Black Congresswomen — Ayanna Pressley and Cori Bush — who connected the Black freedom struggle in the United States to the Palestinian movement for liberation.

“When Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets to demand justice, they were met with force,” said Pressley, who represents the Boston area in Massachusetts. “They faced tear gas, rubber bullets, and a militarized police just as our Palestinian brothers and sisters are facing in Jerusalem today.” Her fellow Congresswoman Bush, who represents St. Louis, Missouri, said “When heavily militarized police forces showed up in Ferguson in 2014… our Palestinian siblings showed up too.”

The speeches signaled the growing prominence of a small bloc of Black Democrats — which includes Reps. Jamaal Bowman and Ilhan Omar, in addition to Bush and Pressley — who are drawing on their support for the Black Lives Matter movement to denounce Israel’s human rights abuses against Palestinians. While there have been past Black Democrats who were openly critical of Israel — figures like former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney — the current crop of Black representatives are more robust in numbers and far more influential within the party and its base.

…Black solidarity with Palestine stretches back to at least the late 1960s, when Israel’s victory in the Six Day War transformed the country’s image in the eyes of Black American thinkers. While Israel was once seen as the product of a just national liberation movement, the occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai Peninsula soured leading Black activists on the Jewish state. In the eyes of the Black left, Israel had asserted itself as a colonial power unjustly oppressing the Palestinian people.

Famously, in a summer 1967 newsletter, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), one of the most prominent civil rights groups in the country, published an article portraying the Zionist movement as one that dispossessed the Palestinian inhabitants of their land using tactics of “terror, force and massacres.” Malcolm X, the renowned Black Muslim minister, visited Gaza in 1964, and penned an essay that year linking Zionism to European imperialism. In 1970, the Black Panther Party stated, “we support the Palestinians’ just struggle for liberation one hundred percent.” More here.

Entangled Futurities

Beautiful work by Tigre Mashaal-Lively for Entangled Futurities. “Finding mythopoetic inspiration from mycoremediation, Entangled Futurities seeks to disrupt cis-heteronormative narratives of hierarchical reproduction, offering instead an ethic of queer relationality for germinating the futures we desire—where an enduring relationship of mutual aid between multispecies organisms (symbionts) creates the conditions for co-evolution.”

interview with mats grorud and dr. dina matar

had the honor of interviewing filmmaker mats grorud (who directed ‘the tower’) and dr. dina matar (chair of the centre for palestine studies at SOAS) for witness palestine film festival today. a brilliant conversation that we hope to share soon. went for a walk to port jefferson afterwards and got a chocolate ganache raspberry cake from la bonne boulangerie. i’m sold on long island folx. all i need now is for all my friends to move here.