Launch Event: Art and Solidarity Reader

• NB: De voertaal van dit evenement is Engels
• The first public launch of Art and Solidarity Reader
• With talks by many of the prominent scholars who have contributed to the book

What: Launch event
With: Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Eva Maria Fjellheim, The Norwegian Solidarity Committee for Latin America, Katya García-Antón and Liv Brissach
Where: Kunstnernes Hus (Cinema), Wergelandsveien 17, Oslo 0167
When: Thursday 17 November 2022, 18:00 – 21:30 hrs
Organised by: OCA, Office for Contemporary Art Norway
Language: English
Admission: Please register here

For the book’s first public launch in Norway, editor of the Reader and former director of OCA, Katya García-Antón will introduce the publication. Norwegian-Palestinian historian, Toufoul Abou-Hodeib will present her research for the Reader and her chapter titled The Travelling Scarf and Other Stories. Art Networks, Politics and Friendships Between Palestine and Norway. Mixed language rights activist and researcher, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, and Southern Sámi PhD fellow, Eva Maria Fjellheim, will discuss Indigenous language advocacy and their contributions to the Reader. Curator of Contemporary Art at MUNCH, and assistant editor of the Reader, Liv Brissach will talk about queer solidarity drawing on the work Probably Chelsea by Heather Dewey-Hagborg and Chelsea Manning presented as part of the ‘Actions of Art and Soliadrity’ exhibition. Welcome words by OCA director, Ruben Steinum.To give collective closure to the programme, the Latin America Solidarity Organisation in Norway (LAG) will lead a Mística; a political ritual and performative practice intended to create unity and solidarity.

About the book

Art and Solidarity Reader. Radical Actions, Politics and Friendships (Valiz, in collaboration with OCA, Office for Contemporary Art Norwat 2022) is a new publication featuring a collection of various accounts of artistic solidarity globally from the 1970s to today. The publication also acts as a companion to the OCA-curated exhibition ‘Actions of Art and Solidarity’ at Kunstnernes Hus (2021). The Reader emphasises the centrality of artist-led empathy and personal connectivity in building networks of solidarity and concrete actions that generate profound transformation in society.

The Reader considers the agency that artists, collectives and art institutions have generated from the 1970s to today to build the radical imaginaries of care and solidarity needed to transform the conditions of our collective existence in the face of local and global crises. Presenting new and historical material, the Reader narrates a series of stories of solidarity across geographies in relation to emergencies connected to ecocide, femicide, genocide, migration, neo-colonialism, inter-religious conflicts, class divisions and heteronomativity, amongst others. It also gives a central place to Indigenous perspectives rarely considered when discussing solidarity in the arts.

The publication includes contributions by Reem Abbas, Toufoul Abou-Hodeib, Noor Abuarafeh, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Ali Hussein Al-Adawy, Salvador Allende, Beth Brant, Wendy Carrig, Heather Dewey-Hagborg, Emory Duoglas, Ntone Edjabe, Ingrid Fadnes, Eva Maria Fjellheim, Katya García-Antón, Soledad García Saavedra, Gavin Jantjes, Sholi Kanuga, Geeta Kapur, Lara Khaldi, Ixchel León, Audre Lorde, Chelsea Manning, Olivier Marboeuf, Barbara Masekela, Naeem Mohaiemen, Mário Pedrosa, Ram Rahman, Laura Raicovich, farid rakun / ruangrupa, Aban Raza, Devika Singh, Irene Soria Guzmán, Kwanele Sosibo, Eszter Szakács, Dulce Celina Ureña Hernández, Alice Walker.