Palestinian Youth Movement New York City (PYM NYC), Artists Against Apartheid, and The People’s Forum are pleased to co-present a one-night-only exhibition and talk with acclaimed Palestinian-American artist, activist, educator, and scholar Samia Halaby (b. 1936, Jerusalem), on Friday, March 22 at 7:30 pm (6:30 pm doors) at The People’s Forum.
Samia Halaby: Art and Activism brings together Halaby’s rarely-exhibited political works — including a suite of ten posters and one large-scale protest banner — which will displayed salon-style within The People’s Forum, and will be accompanied by reproductions of select works in the form of collectible prints, postcards, and t-shirts.
For the past 60 years, Samia Halaby has been at the forefront of abstraction, and is known for creating vibrantly colored geometric paintings drawing inspiration from historical movements such as early Islamic architecture and Russian Constructivism, while maintaining a political undercurrent. Worldwide Intifada (1989), for instance, is a large-scale painting comprising a series of unstretched geometrically-shaped canvas paintings, whose colors ring out in energy as if breaking free from the shackles of oppression. This work is one of many meant to be included in a major survey exhibition at Indiana University’s Eskenazi Museum of Art this past February, which was abruptly canceled due to “safety concerns.” Co-organized with the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University, where it will continue to move forward and open later this year, the cancellation by the Eskenazi Museum of Art nevertheless comes at a moment of widespread silencing, gaslighting, blacklisting, and doxxing of Palestinian artists and activists who demand that our museums and universities reckon with their complicity in the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
Palestinian Youth Movement, Artists Against Apartheid, and The People’s Forum believe in the power of art and culture as a weapon in struggle. We align ourselves with Minister of Culture for the Black Panther Party Emory Douglas’ influential manifesto, Position Paper #1 on Revolutionary Art, and believe that “[r]evolutionary art is a returning from the blind, where we no longer let the oppressor lead us around like watchdogs.”
You can watch the livestream for the event HERE.
