Book free ticket your free ticket here.

Join Sherif Dhaimish, Ayat Mneina and Ghazi Gheblawi as they discuss the life and works of the late Libyan artist and satirist, Hasan ‘Alsatoor’ Dhaimish.

This event with Liverpool Arab Arts Festival marks the launch of alsatoor.com, a new archive documenting the life and works of the late Libyan artist and satirist, Hasan ‘Alsatoor’ Dhaimish. The site, which features over 6,000 images, launches as part of Resistance, Rebellion, Revolution – A Libyan Artist in Exile, an Arts Council England-supported project, which features an upcoming exhibition at Hoxton 253, and a forthcoming biography by Sherif Dhaimish, published by Pendle Press in August 2021.

Hasan arrived in the UK in 1975 after leaving Libya when he was 20 years old. He began publishing satirical cartoons in 1980, working with publications such as Jihad and Al Sharq Al Jadeed for a number of years. Hasan, or Alsatoor (the Cleaver) as was known had settled into British life, but he remained dedicated to the fight for freedom in Libya all the way through his life. His work began to reach people across the globe when publishing with various oppositional Libyan news websites, his own blog and across social media.

For the first time, his published satirical works are featured in one place alongside Hasan’s paintings and digital artwork. Controversial, funny, poignant, brutally honest and often offensive, Alsatoor’s work offers a unique window into Libyan politics over the last few decades. Alongside this is a colourful collection of Hasan’s artworks he produced on canvas, paper and digitally that reflect his life as an exiled man.

This ambitious project continues to evolve with a show in Leeds in November and a variety of events throughout this year and next.

Speaker Bios

Sherif Dhaimish is a publisher and curator originally from Brierfield, Lancashire. In 2010, he graduated from the University of Leeds in Communications, and then worked as an English teacher in South Korea. After a stint of travelling, he returned to the UK to study at King’s College London where he received an MA in Critical Theory. A keen cyclist and swimmer, reader and watcher, Sherif now resides in southeast London with his girlfriend Sarah and dog Toto. He is the son of Hasan Dhaimish, the late Libyan artist and satirist, and Karen Dhaimish, a Pendle-based artist.

Ayat Mneina is a Canadian-Libyan activist, digital media strategist and researcher who grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba on Treaty 1 territory. In 2011, she founded ShababLibya (the Libyan Youth Movement), a social media platform that counteracted the Libyan government’s media blackout by reporting the Libyan uprising using a network of sources on the ground and was widely used by international outlets as a source of reliable information on Libya. Ayat has traveled extensively to share her expertise on Libya presenting at international forums, media outlets and academic institutions including the World Bank/IMF Annual Meetings, UN Women CSW63, BBC Democracy Day, Yale, MIT, The Guardian, CNN, and Al Jazeera. For three years Ayat worked on political campaigns in Canada developing digital media strategy in Manitoba for Indigenous leader, author and politician Wab Kinew. Ayat is currently based in Toronto as a freelance analyst and digital media strategist as well as a producer and researcher for the documentary film Searching for Kikhia which focuses on the story of slain Libyan opposition leader and former Foreign Minister of Libya, Mansur Kikhia. In 2019, Ayat joined the Stories of Girls Resistance Project as the story curator for the MENA region collecting over 20 girls’ resistance stories that will be developed and shared on various platforms over the coming year. You can follow her on

Twitter @amneina.

Ghazi Gheblawi is a Libyan author, blogger, activist, and physician. He has been a leading public speaker on Libyan affairs, pushing for democracy, human rights, and freedom of the press in Libya. In 2004 he co-founded the Libya Alyoum (Libya Today) online newspaper and served as cultural editor until 2009. His award-winning blog, Imtidad, focuses on cultural and social issues in Libya and the Arab world. From the beginning of the Libyan uprising, Gheblawi gathered information and verified reports from activists inside and out of Libya using social media networks. In 2006, he began producing the Imtidad Cultural Podcast, a popular Arabic-language podcast which provided analyses of important news and opinion via interviews with intellectuals and writers. Gheblawi has also published two collections of short stories and poems in Arabic.

In post-Gaddafi Libya, Gheblawi has called for freedom of expression to be enshrined in the country’s constitution and for laws that protect the rights of journalists. In recent years, Gheblawi has continued to make public appearances, give interviews, and write articles, including a piece in the Independent, in which he said, “I believe that the astounding solidarity and creativity this revolution has unleashed is what will give Libyans the confidence in themselves that they need to rebuild the nation.” He was a judge for the prestigious 2017 Caine Prize for African Writing. He currently lives in Britain and works as a physician. His latest work can be found on his blog Imtidad.

Twitter: @Gheblawi