Art Magazine
Student encampment for Palestine outside Porthania, University of Helsinki, May 2024, Photo by Satu Söderholm
A conversation with Isabel and Carl Gakran about the Zág (Araucaria), an indigenous tree threatened with extinction. We talked about their project (Instituto Zág), Indigenous climate justice and the intersection between the Palestinian and the (Brazilian) Indigenous struggles.
READZág Trees, Forest Spirits, and the Settlers: A Conversation with Xokleng Kin
A conversation with Isabel and Carl Gakran about the Zág (Araucaria), an indigenous tree threatened with extinction. We talked about their project (Instituto Zág), Indigenous climate justice and the intersection between the Palestinian and the (Brazilian) Indigenous struggles.
The opposition is not only between institutions and student activists—it also exists within our movement, manifesting in differing strategies. Should we focus on direct, visible actions or institutional processes? Should we shame the university publicly or appeal to its conscience? These approaches are not mutually exclusive—they reinforce each other.
READDisrupting Complicity: Students Organising for Palestine in Finland
Finland is not known for a strong tradition of radical student mobilisation. However, in the wake of the Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, a wave of student activism emerged in three universities in Finland’s capital region: University of Helsinki, Uniarts Helsinki and Aalto University. In this text, the students share their experiences and processes while also mapping a web of connections that unite their actions in challenging their university’s complicity in genocide and settler colonialism.
Musa Shadeedi examines how the feminisation and queering of Palestinian resistance in Gaza are used as tools of justifying genocide and occupation. By situating this tactic within its historical colonial and anti-Islamic context, Shadeedi exposes the contradictions inherent in these narratives.
READQueering Hamas: A Colonial Weapon
Musa Shadeedi examines how the feminisation and queering of Palestinian resistance in Gaza are used as tools of justifying genocide and occupation. By situating this tactic within its historical colonial and anti-Islamic context, Shadeedi exposes the contradictions inherent in these narratives.
History, in the work of Amjad, is incomplete without memory and the collection of subliminal voices within the annals of time. Memory is not restricted to the singular phenomenon of evoking nostalgia, but is a significant conduit in Amjad’s work used to help construct and situate oneself in the present moment.
READSubliminal Spaces & the (Re)Collecting of Identity: A Review of Uzair Amjad’s The Terrain Between
Uzair Amjad’s The Terrain Between explores colonial legacies, migration, and diasporic identity through evocative paintings. By layering personal and historical narratives, the exhibit conjures subliminal spaces where memory, displacement, and transformation shape the collective present.
In his remarkable 2019 debut feature film Soundless Dance, Raveendran narrates the horror of the Vanni genocide (2008-2009) through two physically and politically vastly different places. Thousands of kilometers apart, both lands are bridged by a young refugee who sleepwalks through them, neatly weaving them into a single landscape that is inhabited by a torn, oppressed and uprooted people who are seeking stability, safety and a future across these grounds.
READMourning from a Distance: A Review of Pradeepan Raveendran’s ‘Soundless Dance’
Though ‘Soundless Dance’ is now six years old, it is a film many Eelam Tamil viewers and others remain to date unfortunately unaware of. By inviting us to observe a genocide from outside its centre of violence, the director of the film artfully manages to show viewers the actual reach of weapons and the costs of state crimes to concerned and displaced people.
The role of the artists’ associations/unions in cultural politics is even more important when new legislation, guidelines or practices are proposed. If the artists’ associations are not convincing and actively participating in the negotiations about legislation, nobody else will look after their interests.
READArt is a Revolutionary Power: An Interview with Teemu Mäki
Triinu Soikmets and Teemu Mäki discuss the vital role of artist unions in challenging market vulnerabilities and art’s revolutionary power in societal change.
Bulldozers, often seen as neutral tools of industrial demolition, are instruments of territorial domination, urban redevelopment, and political suppression. Yet within these acts of destruction, counter-narratives emerge—poetry, mourning, and collective remembrance—that reclaim agency in the face of state-sanctioned ruination. If ruination is a strategy of power, it is also a site of resistance.
READOn Bulldozer Politics: An Interview with Léopold Lambert & Shivangi Mariam Raj
Ruins are not just remnants of the past—they are strategic, political, and weaponised with intent. In this conversation on ‘Bulldozer Politics,’ Léopold Lambert & Shivangi Mariam Raj of the Funambulist explore how demolition and displacement serve state power while also becoming spaces of resistance and remembrance.
The collapse of the Assad regime and HTS’s rise in Syria have revived debates in Egypt and the region, over the fragile status of religious minorities, particularly Copts, long caught between authoritarianism and Islamist extremism. But when freed from such choices, what kind of worlds do they imagine? In this paper, Ismail Fayed explores this question through the life histories and reflections of two prominent Coptic intellectuals, Salama Musa and Louis Awad.
READWhose Imaginary? Coptic Intellectuals and the Question of Subjectivity
The collapse of the Assad regime and HTS’s rise in Syria have revived debates in Egypt and the region, over the fragile status of religious minorities, particularly Copts, long caught between authoritarianism and Islamist extremism. But when freed from such choices, what kind of worlds do they imagine? In this paper, Ismail Fayed explores this question through the life histories and reflections of two prominent Coptic intellectuals, Salama Musa and Louis Awad.
