Tasakko’ (تســّكع): The Politics of Street Art in AmmanTassako’ investigates transformations in the way street art functions in Amman, Jordan in the context the neoliberal economic policies and cultural diplomacy. Drawing on Michel De Certeau’s framework, the thesis explores the changing nature of street art in the city, from a subversive “tactic” to a “strategy” used for alleged beautification and political repression. The research is grounded in interviews with artists, local and foreign funders, and government representatives, as well as a spatial and visual analysis of street art across Amman. Tasakko’ examines street art as a medium of gentrification projects, the promotion of cultural tourism, and artistic censorship—all of which contribute to the decontextualization of the streets of the city and alienation of its residents. The study also highlights the importance of observing lesser-discussed forms of street art, such as scribbles, love confessions, and everyday writings on city walls, which can only be encountered by physically wandering the streets and engaging with the built environment.
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Adalah
Justice
Project
Artworks created for campaigns related to the Palestinian Movement in the US and the diaspora more generally
Step By Step/Heart By Heart / 2023
Return to Unity Intifada / 2021
Climate Change in Gaza / 2021
Imagine Ending Apartheid / 2023
—Alaa Abd El-Fattah
Alaa is an Egyptian activist, open source software developer, and writer.
Alaa has faced ongoing persecution under Mubarak and Morsi, and today is being held in a maximum security prison by Sisi’s regime.
#FreeAlaa is years-long campaign calling for Alaa’s immediate release from prison. In this version of the campaign we aimed to shed light on Alaa’s writings and book: “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.”
These designs are published on wikimedia creative commons and have been used around the globe to call for the immediate release of Alaa, and all political prisoners in Egypt and beyond.
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Alaa has faced ongoing persecution under Mubarak and Morsi, and today is being held in a maximum security prison by Sisi’s regime.
#FreeAlaa is years-long campaign calling for Alaa’s immediate release from prison. In this version of the campaign we aimed to shed light on Alaa’s writings and book: “You Have Not Yet Been Defeated.”
These designs are published on wikimedia creative commons and have been used around the globe to call for the immediate release of Alaa, and all political prisoners in Egypt and beyond.
“Yes, on the simple question of how to finally retire the hashtag #FreeAlaa you have little, if any, agency, but on the question of whether the internet is a space in which we come together to enjoy, assert, practise and defend universal rights and freedoms you have a lot of agency. Unlike me, you have not yet been defeated.”
- You Have Not Been
Defeated, 2017
The Written Resistance
issue: 0.0002WEEKS WHEN DECADES HAPPEN
“There are decades where nothinghappens; and there are weeks wheredecades happen." – Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Holy Grain is a mural / installation work in progress. The piece is based on the history of bread, the contemporary cultural and active practices that are shaped by the economic and symbolic capital of bread in Jordan and some of its neighboring countries.
Holy Grain will be exhibited on the wooden graffiti wall found next to the Practice Rooms behind Campus Center. Painted on the wall, the mural takes inspiration from the chant used in the bread riots in Jordan in 2016 (خبز، حرّية، عدالة إجتماعية) which translates to (bread, freedom and social justice).
Based on the tradition of leaving stale or dry bread hanging in plastic bags on the side of public garbage bins in Jordan, I hung a plastic bag containing, instead of bread, a comic strip that talks about two topics. One, the oldest piece of bread found in the northeastern desert of the country. Two, US agricultural dumping, also known as one of the main reasons Jordan does not produce its own wheat anymore.
The audience is invited to enjoy the mural and also to come close and grab a comic strip to take them home.
Presented as part of the Undercooked works-in-progress microfestival by MA Human Rights & the Arts.
