Join us for this panel discussion chaired by Hazem Jamjoum ft Dr Lisa Palmer, Sukaina Rajwani + Sumayyah Zannath
Like the 'weeds' that push through even prison concrete, there is much the state, and corporations can't control or don’t have the imagination to control. How can we collectively imagine and act beyond the carceral gaze, while also addressing current realities? Furthermore, how do issues of land justice intersect with efforts to challenge the prison-industrial complex?
About the panellists
Hazem Jamjoum is a translator, cultural historian, and the founding editor of the publishing house Safarjal Press. His translations include Ghassan Kanafani’s The Revolution of 1936–1939 in Palestine (1804 Books, 2023); Maya Abu al-Hayyat’s novel No One Knows Their Blood Type (CSU Poetry Center, 2024)
Dr Lisa Amanda Palmer is a Senior Visiting Research Fellow in Black Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. She was the former Associate Professor and Interim Director of the Stephen Lawrence Research Centre at De Montfort University, Leicester. She co-founded and was the Course Director for the Black Studies undergraduate programme and Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University. Her research focuses on Black feminist love politics, Black cultural politics with a critical emphasis on the coloniality race, racism, gender and sexuality. Her writing covers a broad spectrum of fields including the gendered politics of lovers’ rock music, the production of local community archives and knowledge production, Blackness land and allotments, and the misogynoir faced by Black women in British public life. She is currently writing her book on the cultural politics of the UK’s lover’s rock reggae scene.
Sukaina Rajwani - mother of Fatema Zainab Rajwani, one of the Filton 25 Palestine Action activists, who was recently sentenced as a terrorist in the UK for trying to disrupt the supply of drones and weapons to Israel during an ongoing, live streamed genocide in Gaza. Sukaina has been advocating tirelessly for her daughter since Fatema Zainab's arrest and incarceration in August 2024.
Akil Scafe-Smith is a director of RESOLVE Collective, an interdisciplinary design collective that combines architecture, engineering, technology, and art to address social challenges. They have delivered numerous projects, workshops, publications, and talks in the UK and across the world, all of which look toward realising just and equitable visions of change in our built environment. RESOLVE recently launched Material Store, a space that redistributes surplus material from art institutions turning cultural waste into community assets. They are currently commissioned artists at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London and the Bienal Afrodiaspórica in Cali, Colombia and have recently completed exhibitions and installations at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Walk & Talk Biennale in Açores, Architecture Fringe in Edinburgh, and Orleans House, London. This year, they co-founded Tipping Point East, the UK’s first circular construction and bio-material hub based in Newham, East London, with Material Cultures and Yes Make.
Sumayyah Zannath is a writer, community organiser and creative facilitator. She is part of the Nejma Collective, an abolitionist group rooted in Islamic principles. They build towards a world without prisons through material support across the prison border and political education. Sumayyah is also part of Land in Our Names, a land and racial justice collective that is establishing a BPOC land project through the framework of reparations.
This event is part of the wider public programme of events for the Rooted Through Realms exhibition.
About the exhibition
Rooted Through Realms, is a solo exhibition featuring a new body of work by artist Shaheen Kasmani, curated by Aaisha Akhtar. This exhibition calls upon us to bear witness and connect the dots between ongoing settler colonialism, climate change, and local and global injustices, whilst also encouraging us to employ our senses and otherworldly faculties to collectively imagine new possibilities as inspired by the gardens of paradise.
This exhibition was made possible with support from Arts Council England. Shaheen’s residency and Ort Gallery’s professional development work in the lead up to the exhibition were generously supported by Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
Shaheen Kasmani is an artist, creative producer, curator and educator. With a MA in Visual Traditional & Islamic Arts, her interests lie in narratives around coloniality and heritage, art, architecture and patterns. Shaheen was the lead curator for the Ramadan Pavilion at the V&A Museum, and co-curated The Past is Now exhibition at Birmingham Museum. She has exhibited her work in the UK and Europe, and guest lectures at universities in the US.
@shaheen.kasmani
Aaisha Akhtar is a Birmingham-based curator, writer, and producer. She currently serves as Artistic Lead at Ort Gallery (2021 – present), where she works with artists and creatives, supporting them in their professional development and artistic practice via Warmth. Beyond her role at Ort Gallery, she is a custodian at Birmingham Resistance Library. Her interests include, but are not limited to, anti-colonial/alternative and care-centred approaches to making, producing, and engaging with art and literature, as well as pop culture, the gaze, disability, language, libraries and emotion.
Ort Gallery is a community-led visual arts and poetry organisation practising equity in the minutiae of our daily work. We create spaces for artists and communities to slow down, unlearn, and rebuild ways of working grounded in care, access and collective wellbeing.
Friction Arts is a Birmingham-based arts organisation creating socially engaged projects and programmes from its home at The Edge in Deritend/Highgate. Since 2004, Friction has worked with communities to help people find their voice, tell their stories, build confidence and explore the world and their place within it. Our work is responsive and collaborative, using creative approaches to support individual and social change.
Tickets
In order to ensure this programme is accessible to all, we have implemented a three-tiered ticketing system: Pay As You Feel, Standard tickets priced at £5.00 (plus Eventbrite fee), as well as Solidarity Tickets priced at £10 (plus Eventbrite fee).
If you would like to attend this event but cannot afford to purchase a paid ticket, please get in touch with us directly at info@ortgallery.co.uk
Access
The venue has step-free access, baby-changing facilities and a working lift. The exhibition is held in the Red Studio, which is accessible via one flight of stairs. This event will be taking place in the Grey Studio, located on the ground floor.
Prayer mats will be available for those who wish to pray onsite.
This programme will be running on Crip Time. As a result, we endeavour to reschedule events should any of our contributors not feel well / experience a change in capacity in the lead-up to and / or on the day of the event itself.
Further information, including details on how to get to the venue, can be found here.