our beautiful speakers, musicians, artists, organizers, and audience members at imagine palestine on aug 23, 2024. thank u muna, dina, andrea, hernease, lamisa, matt, molly, jennifer, megan, rashaad, michelle, jackie, wegdan, halima, and rachel <3
photo credit: elizabeth chiang and mara ahmed
so grateful for beautiful people in this world who can come together, almost at the last minute, and create small disruptions (with ripple effects – always ripple effects) in systems of imperial power and destruction. thank u rachel crawford and matt mcdonald for being my compadres. more pictures from ‘imagine palestine’ soon!
photo credit: elizabeth chiang
some pictures from imagine palestine: an evening of poetry readings and music to raise funds for gaza at the @swedgemission in #rochesterny. a space full of beautiful people who shared visions of freedom for palestine, and stunning palestinian poetry in conversation with live music. a full house where we were able to raise thousands for the gaza municipality.
the struggle to decolonize is something special. it creates love and solidarity between complete strangers. it builds community <3
this will be a series of events to support and celebrate gaza and palestine. stay tuned!
organized by @unabridged.roc, mara ahmed and matthew mcdonald
good morning rochester! i am back and so looking forward to imagine palestine, an evening of poetry readings and music to raise funds for gaza, today at 7pm at the south wedge mission in rochester, ny. 12 artists and activists, 4 musicians, 7 poems by palestinian poets, multiple visions of palestinian futures, the reading of a beloved classic by a resistance writer, and a unique juxtaposition of silence for gaza by mahmoud darwish and musical reflections. all of it to come together in one space and provide mutual aid to the gaza municipality which is doing essential work at this moment. the event is free but pls come ready to donate and intervene in systems of oppression. see u at 7pm this evening!
So proud to attend the opening of my friend Safia’s photography exhibition at the Glen Cove Public Library yesterday! Here is more about her brilliant project:
“Living Water for Women is a halfway house located in Glen Cove, NY that fosters growth and independence for formerly incarcerated women to overcome their addictions. In 2016 l established biweekly art workshops at the home. At each session we use art as means of communication and expression. In this process, stories are shared, tears are often shed, and an important community has been created. These women are often shunned and forgotten by their families, friends, and society. They have important stories to share to help those who might also be struggling with addiction, mental health issues, and jobs. By combining portraits with transcribed interviews, I hope to both empower these women and raise awareness about addiction.“
Friends, as you know settler colonial violence has reached shocking levels in Gaza, with non-stop bombings and massacres for the past 10 months.
Gaza’s infrastructure has been systematically destroyed which means that along with starvation (on account of the food and water blockade), deadly epidemics are also setting in. The poliovirus has been found in sewage water now flowing freely in Gaza.
The Gaza Municipality provides water, sanitation and sewage management, waste collection, the removal of debris and reopening of key thoroughfares to facilitate movement, and aid to personnel doing heroic emergency work. They have started a fundraiser and are trying to raise a million dollars. They still have a long way to go. Let’s support them.
At this gathering, we hope to imagine Palestine beyond the ongoing horrors. Fanon said: “The settler’s work is to make dreams of liberty impossible for the native.” Let’s challenge such temporal control and envision Palestinian futures free of Zionist settler domination.
We will read poetry by Palestinian poets and writers, some of them iconic, others still relatively young. We will listen to music that will frame beautiful words of hope and resistance, and inspire us to visualize freedom for Palestine.
This is a free event where we will invite everyone to donate directly to the Gaza Municipality. Let’s articulate a just future in the face of imperial death cults – it’s a radical act!
Organized by Unabridged Literary Arts, Matthew McDonald and myself/ Warp & Weft Archive. Join us!
so happy to attend my friend rene bouchard’s ‘dialogue: a personal exploration of trauma related dissociation through song’ at @industrymakers, a fantastic space for the arts in huntington, new york. rene writes songs and music, creates short films and animated collages, produces gorgeous artwork, and has the courage to talk about complex post traumatic stress disorder openly and visibly. brava rene <3
3 more artists from the Whitney Biennial that I loved. The last artist in particular has truly moved me to think about our current apocalyptic times in a different way by subverting colonial language and the limited, dismal visions it embodies.
Kiyan Williams, born 1991 in Newark, NJ: In Williams’s outdoor sculpture Ruins of Empire /I or The Earth Swallows the Master’s House, the north facade of the White House, which is composed of earth, leans on one side and sinks into the floor… The labor history embedded in the dirt points to a fragility in our political foundations, while the earth’s erosion embodies a critique of institutionality at a moment when institutions are toppling.
Rose B. Simpson, born 1983, Santa Fe, NM: In Rose B. Simpson’s Daughters: Reverence, four figures gaze at one another, creating a kind of force field of protection and solidarity that stands in contrast to an unstable world. “My lifework,” Simpson has explained, “is a seeking out of tools to use to heal the damages I have experienced as a human being of our postmodern and postcolonial era-objectification, stereotyping, and the disempowering detachment of our creative selves through the ease of modern technology.”
Demian Diné Yazhi’, born 1983 in Gallup, NM, we must stop imagining apocalypse/genocide + we must imagine liberation, 2024: As a poet and activist, Dine Yazhi’ has thought about how to use a colonizer’s language against colonialism, noting that they “want to see more poetry at protests.” Written in red neon, the text in this work emerges from the artist’s reflections on Indigenous resistance movements. Diné Yazhi calls on people working toward liberation to avoid predicting futures rooted in a Euro-Western “romanticization and addiction with apocalypse,” speculating that accepting catastrophe as a given leads to “writing our own demise or prisons.” Instead, they advocate for writing stories of liberation, finding alternate ways to work through oppressive moments as a collective.
So I went to the Whitney Biennial in NY and what I liked most was the work of Indigenous/ Asian/ South American artists. Here are some examples
-Cannupa Hanska Luger born 1979, Standing Rock, ND: “This installation is not inverted… our current world is upside down.” For the artist, upending our grounding in time and space makes way for imagined futures free of colonialism and capitalism, where broader Indigenous knowledge can thrive.
-Takako Yamaguchi, born 1952 in Okayama, Japan: Her recent seascapes use meticulously rendered zigzags, tubes, and lines to suggest weather and other natural elements. They reflect Yamaguchi’s experimentation with what she calls “abstraction in reverse,” or taking recognizable forms, like clouds or waves, and abstracting them to the point of pattern.
-Clarissa Tossin, born 1973 in Porto Alegre, Brazil: Clarissa Tossin’s film appears alongside 3D-printed replicas of pre-Columbian Maya wind instruments. Tossin had the replicas made so that they could be played in the film, which traces the movement of Maya people and culture across multiple spaces and temporalities, real and imagined, cosmological and colonized. The fact that the ancient instruments are not available for use-isolated from their original context and kept behind glass in museum collections-can be seen as a distillation of the themes of dislocation and tradition that Tossin works to reconcile in the film. Featuring the Kiche ‘Kaqchiquel poet Rosa Chávez and the Ixil Maya artist Tohil Fidel Brito Bernal, the film looks at ways in which contemporary Maya culture is activated by means of both reclamation and re-creation.
More in next post :))
almost 10 years ago! my essay in post magazine, a wonderful publication that doesn’t exist anymore sadly. they gave me free rein to write whatever i wanted and had me photographed in my studio.
a recap of moments: walk by battery park at night with my daughter and looking at nyc thru her eyes, listening to françoise hardy again and feeling this profound emotional tug, remembering donald sutherland in ‘ordinary people’ and the extraordinary brilliance with which he talked about sculpture in one of his interviews, attending a gaza fundraiser organized by global feminists for palestine at jaishri’s studio in brooklyn (yes, that’s suheir hammad in the black veil) and being in community with other artists and writers, and finally dinner at tacombi’s with the lovely zeenat – it means everything to me to spend time with my friends’ kids and know that they are thriving.
last post about kolaj fest new orleans: wanted to say something about my presentation and the screening of ‘return to sender: women of color in colonial postcards & the politics of representation.’
i started with a 20 min talk in which i expanded on some of the themes that are discussed in the film: the male gaze, the colonial lens, orientalism and the work of edward said, epistemicide and the work of ramon grosfoguel, photography as a tool of colonial surveys and expansion, white feminism, and of course palestine. i wasn’t sure of the reaction as my work digs deep into uncomfortable histories and racist systems, but i couldn’t have hoped for a better response. that many of the people in the audience were artists and scholars helped spark a vibrant discussion, but what meant most to me was what i heard from women, many of them women of color. there were a lot of tears and emotion, hugs and sharing. this is what art is for me: a way to interface and create community. thank u once again to the kolaj institute and all the wonderful people who attended 
photographs by @eisenbergpitman
Here is a recap of a project I’ve been working on since December last year.
The Warp & Weft audio archive came together in 2020 as a way to connect people from across the world during a global pandemic that caused untold loss and grief.
It is an ongoing project that allows diverse people (separated by arbitrary political borders) to share their stories and feel a sense of collective power.
In December 2023 we launched the next phase of this project. In the midst of the gruesome genocide in Gaza, people from around the world are welcome to join us in reading, holding up, and sharing the voices and stories of Palestinian writers and poets.
This is an open archive, so contact us if you would like to contribute a reading and pls follow us on Instagram: @WarpAndWeftArchive
Rajesh Barnabas wrote a piece about this project for Boomtown Press back in January:
‘Sometimes it seems trivial to be reciting poetry at a time of genocide. It can feel like a stunning privilege. But it’s also an act of resistance that goes hand in hand with protests and activist actions. As the Palestinian poet George Abraham has said: “Poetry can’t stop a bullet. Poetry won’t free a prisoner. And that’s why we need to do the political organizing work as well. But if we can’t imagine a free liberated world in language, how can we build one?”’
Read full article here.
friday june 14th in new orleans: started the day with a big breakfast at who dat cafe – had many brunches there back in feb. best biscuits and homemade jellies. arrived at cafe istanbul a bit late – apparently there is another ‘istanbul cafe’ on royal st and that’s the address i gave uber by mistake. so went on a longish car ride just to loop back to where i started. attended ‘collage & poetry’ followed by ‘time & fragmentation: collage theories.’ clive knights’ presentation intrigued me as i’ve been thinking about fragmentation in the context of war and its impact on the social/ political/ individual body. met the wonderful jenny veninga, a fellow activist and scholar, who shared other brilliant ideas with me. attended ‘getting organized: collage projects’ and then after a quick lunch at st. roch market, was inspired by ‘take me to the water: a baptism in collage,’ a workshop with the amazing lavonna varnado-brown, who talked about claudia rankine’s book ‘citizen’ and the idea of the body having memory – a major inspiration for my work. watch ‘the body has memory’ a video poem i created in 2022 and for which i won best in show at a juried exhibition organized by the huntington arts council in ny. link in comments 
ended the day with collage & kiki, at the john thompson legacy center, hosted by lavonna varnado brown and jennella young. created collages with other artists and spent a lovely evening. so thankful to kolaj institute for creating this wonderful space at the intersection of art, activism, and academic research. hope to make this an annual ritual inshallah.
started working on this collage today. just a beginning, but love this photograph of newly arrived immigrants on ellis island. want to do something about outstripping/ transcending the frame/ the limits that are supposed to contain and define us.
