Tag: climate crisis

Daraa Tribes shot

Arts Council England Environmental Sustainability Report 2020/2021

We’re proud to be featured as a case study in Arts Council England’s Environmental Responsibility Annual Report 2020-21, a publication which presents National Portfolio Organisations (NPO) environmental data and narratives for the period of 1 April 2020 – 31 March 2021. It comes as the Arts Council England and its environmental partner, the non-profit organisation Julie’s Bicycle mark the 10th year of their world-first environmental programme this year.

Read LAAF’s case study here

Read the full report here

Image: Daraa Tribes performing online at LAAF 2020

22 at Open Eye Digital Window Gallery

22, the creative anthology commissioned by LAAF as a response to COP26 is to be exhibited at Open Eye’s Digital Window Gallery until 13 February.

22 is a creative anthology by Arab artists from 22 countries across the Middle East and North Africa. Commissioned by Liverpool Arab Arts Festival as a rapid response to COP26, the artistic works include music, visual art, poetry, illustration and photography and highlight the disproportionate impact the climate crisis is having on the countries and communities living within the MENA region.

From water shortages to population displacement, changes in climate and failing crops, the impact of the climate crisis is worsened by the continuing hangovers of conflict and colonialism, meaning the issues already existing in the MENA region are exacerbated.

As global leaders gathered in Glasgow for COP26, each of the 22 artists provided an insight into how the climate crisis is affecting their community. As a creative anthology it creates a time capsule at a crucial moment in history.

Arab voices are not strongly heard within the climate crisis conversation in the West, despite the disproportionate and severe effects those on the ground are facing. Capturing the hopes and fears of a generation of Arab artists, 22 reflects the range of perceptions and preoccupations of those living in or with heritage of these specific Arab areas.

22 exhibits at Open Eye as the Look Climate Lab 2022 launches, ahead of the Look Photo Biennial 2022, the Climate Lab is a series of research projects on climate change. Read more here

The show will be played on the digital screen 11am-4pm Wed-Sun, between Wed 19 Jan – Sun 13 Feb

Explore 22 below

www.arabartsfestival.com/22project 

ARTISTS / IDEAS / NOW – Patriarchy and the Climate Crisis

Watch on YouTube

Liverpool Arab Arts Festival in collaboration with Creative Destruction has produced a series of online conversations titled ARTISTS / IDEAS / NOW. This series is part of LAAF’s four-month festival focused on the climate crisis, and invites leading creatives, activists and thinkers to explore the complexities surrounding the climate emergency.

This conversation looks at the connection between patriarchy and the climate crisis. How is the climate crisis impacting women and people of marginalised genders? Are there feminist solutions to the crisis – perhaps rooted in cultural traditions and practices which have been upended by consumerist habits? How can artists help illuminate the parallels between society’s  treatment of women and nature?

Watch here

The panel will be made up of artists who have contributed to the 22 project
Ala Buisir is a documentary photographer born in Ireland with Libyan roots. A graduate with a BA in Photography from TU Dublin. Then an MA in Journalism from DCU and currently doing a PhD by practice in UL. Her work documents the social and political tension around us today. The aim is to raise awareness by presenting events through different perspectives in hopes that it may also bring about change.Website: www.alabuisir.com
Juliana Yazbeck is an award-winning actor, writer & musical artist. As an actor, she is best known for her roles as Niqabi Ninja in Sara Sharaawi’s play Niqabi Ninja, Roza Salih in Glasgow Girls (National Theatre of Scotland) and Yara in the Emmy-winning series Shankaboot (BBC World Service).Juliana’s debut record SUNGOD was awarded PRS Foundation’s Women Make Music Award. Juliana recently played a sold-out show at London’s Electric Ballroom (2020). In 2019, Juliana played London’s ULU alongside Sudanese icon AlSarah, headlined the National Theatre River Stage and Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, and was nominated for the Arab British Centre’s Award for Culture.Juliana also writes regularly. Her words feature in gal-dem magazine and on Medium.com.Twitter: @julianayaz
Maha Alasaker is a visual artist based in Kuwait. She is a 2014 graduate from the International Center of Photography.Through her artwork, Maha tries to gain a deeper understanding of herself while attempting to engage issues of culture and identity. Her curiosity centers around how a woman’s upbringing affects identity and self-worth.Maha’s projects have been displayed in numerous exhibitions in New York City and London, as well as the United Arab Emirates and Kuwait. Magazines such as Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, Marie Claire and Rolling Stone have featured her work.In 2019, Maha published her first photo book, “Women of Kuwait”, which was then acquired by the Getty Research Institute and The Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

 

Illustrated view from a bridge in Cairo. It is summer and there are palm trees in the foreground and pyramids in the background.

22 – Saba Hamzah: Soliloquy to Floating Doom

This film-poem is an invitation to reflect on the situation in Yemen, which is currently known as the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”. Not much work is being done in Yemen regarding climate change, and especially the threat posed by the floating oil storage vessel, FSO Safer, in the Red Sea. The tanker is likely to explode or sink according to experts, which will cause an environmental disaster that is difficult to contain. This will affect the lives of many, not only in Yemen but also in other countries. However, it seems that the world is still in denial since the danger is invisible to many, and there is no interest in looking beyond the self or diving to explore the unseen.

Photo of Saba HamzaSaba Hamzah (@Saba_Hamzah) is a Yemeni poet-scholar, writer, and educator. She received her master’s degree in Gender Studies from Utrecht University. Saba’s main devices are line and light and the moments in between. Her work questions power structures of societies at large using art and literary interventions as tools for social mediation and transformation. Her scholarship activates silences in living archives of women in the conditions of diaspora and exile.

https://www.sabahamzah.com/

22 – Walid Bouchouchi: ISOTYPE

FIRE © Walid Bouchouchi
EXTREMES © Walid Bouchouchi
PASSIVE © Walid Bouchouchi
COOL © Walid Bouchouchi
PURCHASE © Walid Bouchouchi
UTOPIA © Walid Bouchouchi
COLONIZATION © Walid Bouchouchi
WAR © Walid Bouchouchi
KARMA © Walid Bouchouchi

ISOTYPE is a series of images inspired by Otto Neurath’s theory on isotypes – which he considers to be a universal and non-verbal language – which aims to transform information into visual forms. In this sense, what could be more universal than the emoji in our digital age? I use this iconography (Emoji) common to all people and cultures to talk about a problem that concerns us all, and which requires action on a global scale.

“Words divide, images unite” — Otto Neurath

Walid Bouchouchi is a graphic designer and Fine Arts graduate from Algiers. He is interested in the link between writing and oral expression in the different languages and cultures, with which he is frequently confronted between Algiers, Marseille and Paris. He founded the AKAKIR studio in 2016, participated in numerous international  exhibitions and produced the branding for several cultural festivals.

Photo of Dana Dajani

22 – Dana Dajani: Origin Story

“Origin Story” is a spoken word poem which reframes our current moment in history as part of the creation tale of the next generation of heroes: young climate justice activists who will lead the monumental task of transitioning our world from the industrial growth society into a life-sustaining living system.

Photo of Dana DajaniDana Dajani is a Palestinian-American actress, poet, and humanitarian. Known for her theatrical style of spoken word poetry centered on social justice, Dana has been invited to perform around the world, including at the Sydney Opera House and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

Previously based in the UAE (2011-2018), Dana was honored for her contributions to the creative community, as well as her bilingual performances on screen and on stage, with Emirates Woman “Artist of the Year” award, the “Young Arab Award for Entertainment”, and others. She currently lives between Amman, Jordan, and London, UK with her husband and collaborator, Rami Kanso.

Connect online at www.danadajani.com

Instagram @danadajani.poetry

22 – Saleh Lo: Aichetou

Artwork: Saleh Lo

The most obvious effects of climate change on the land ecosystem in my country, Mauritania, is desertification and its consequences. We are experiencing significant droughts with immediate effects of the food security of people, particularly those living in villages, like Aichetou – the woman I painted while breastfeeding her newborn baby. Action is needed, soon.

Photo of Saleh LoSaleh Lo was born in 1984 in Mauritania. Since childhood he has naturally been predisposed for figurative art, which he experiments in various ways. As a self-taught artist, he has refined hyper realistic techniques through the study of the works of other artists and following tutorials on YouTube. His work tackles societal issues such as street children, mixed-race unions and slavery. He has exhibited and has taken part in projects in Nouakchott, Dakar, Barcelona, Berlin, Mumbay among others. He lives and works in Nouakchott, Mauritania.
Photo of Tamara Al-Mashouk

22 – Tamara Al-Mashouk: SKIN (de-colonized)

This work is a recontextualization of a piece from 2016 titled SKIN where close up topographies of bodies can easily be perceived as landscapes. The subtitles are written in a conversational tone mimicking that of an artist talk and create a space of reflection on my relationship to my skin then and now. It places the issues of race and modern day imperialism face to face with the conversation on the climate crisis.

 

Photo of Tamara Al-MashoukTamara Al-Mashouk is a London based Arab artist, curator, and organizer. Through multi-channel video, performance, and architectural installation, her work explores the movement of people across societal and geographic borders and negotiates the relationship between home, identity, and memory. It examines resistance as a site of potential and expands epigenetics beyond the body into place and matter.

She has screened video internationally at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the Yuan Museum in Beijing, Fábrica de Arte Cubano in Havana, and more. She has been interviewed in Forbes, Vice Arabia, and on BBC Radio. She has curated countless panels including for Arab Women Artists Now, has spoken at Tate Britain, was a 2018-2019 research fellow with the Center for Arts Design and Social Research and a 2019 – 2020 Traveling Fellow for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. She holds a BA in architecture from Wellesley College and a Post-Bac and MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, Boston.

Photo of Zainab Rahim

22 – Alaa Alsaraji & Zainab Rahim: The land of 30 million palm trees

The story of Iraq’s climate and environmental crisis is one of many layers, each generational challenge compounded by another. We wanted to use the iconic (and delicious) Basra Date Syrup jar as a starting point from which to explore the legacies of palm groves among other issues in the soil, water and air. But we also wanted to simultaneously rewind and fast forward – to relish in the abundance that Iraq once had and the joyous moments that we hope will return.

Photo of Alaa AlsarajiAlaa Alsaraji is a London-based visual artist, designer and creative facilitator. Through her creative practice she aims to explore themes such as belonging, reimagining space and community and the impacts of Islamophobia in British society, predominately using the medium of digital illustration. She also works with various creative and educational organisations and collectives as a facilitator, delivering creative workshops with children and women’s groups. In her work she always seeks to emphasise the value of using creativity as a pedagogical process to address and explore structural issues  and their impact on individuals and communities.

Alaa is also the arts editor of Khidr Collective, a multidisciplinary artist collective creating platforms and spaces for young Muslim creatives through the annual Khidr Zine and online platform.

 

Photo of Zainab RahimZainab Rahim is a writer and editor. She works for a legal charity called RAID, holding corporations to account for human rights abuse and environmental damage. She has recently completed an MA in Postcolonial Culture & Global Policy.

Alongside this, Zainab is the non-fiction editor of @KhidrCollective’s annual zine and has contributed to their newest issue, WATER. She is also the editor-in-chief of a commentary website called The Platform (@YourPlatformUK) seeking to share marginalised stories.

Zainab enjoys archives and photography, as well as feature writing, and hopes to continue developing her skills in these areas. Her review of television drama Baghdad Central was published in Issue 36 of Critical Muslim by Hurst Publishers. Follow her @zainoted.

22 – Ala Buisir: Returning to traditions

When we think of climate change, it is the present that comes to mind – and how things were good in past. Looking back at our traditions, we used essential tools to make beautiful things.

 

That is what inspired this project. The traditional clothes were made from locally-sourced materials and then hand-crafted. Each item of clothing had a story to tell. Each region had its colour, material, embroidery and style for how to wear the garments. At times the clothes were passed on from one member of the family to another, because they were durable and made to last.

 

We need to revisit our traditions to see how we can make a change. Our fast way of life will have to change due to the damage we are causing to the Earth. So why not slow it down ourselves before it’s too late?

Photo of Ala BuisirAla Buisir is a documentary photographer born in Ireland with Libyan roots. A graduate with a BA in Photography from TU Dublin. Then an MA in Journalism from DCU and currently doing a PhD by practice in UL. Her work documents the social and political tension around us today. The aim is to raise awareness by presenting events through different perspectives in hopes that it may also bring about change.

Website: www.alabuisir.com