Art As Activism
The views and opinions expressed in this programme do not necessarily represent the views of Abrar
Open Discussions/ Gulf Cultural Club
Art as Activism
* Hanaa Malallah (Artist – pioneer of the ‘Ruins Technique)
** Eman Fezzani (Artist, curator, cultural coordinator)
***Piers Secuanda (Artist, highlighting destruction of culture)
Tuesday 16th September 2025
Art as activism refers to the use of artistic expression to promote social or political change, challenging injustices and raising awareness about contemporary issues. This concept is rooted in the idea that art can serve as a powerful tool for critique and communication, often reflecting the struggles and experiences of marginalized communities. By depicting real-life struggles and social issues, art becomes a medium for dialogue, inspiring action and mobilizing audiences toward social justice. Our three speakers will discuss the concept of art as activism with reference to their prolific creative output and contemporary Iraqi and Libyan art and the use of art to highlight destruction of heritage and culture.
Eman Fezzani: Art as activism refers to the use of artistic expression to promote social or
political change, to challenge injustice and raise awareness of contemporary issues. In this discussion, I will explore how contemporary Libyan art engages with activism, focusing on the ways in which young emerging artist such as Shefa Salem reconstruct ancient history through painting, and how Nasser El Barouni transforms cultural elements into creative compositions that preserve Libyan heritage while telling stories of identity and belonging.
I am a British-Libyan artist, curator and cultural coordinator and the founder of Beit El Fezzani Café, an art gallery and venue hire. I curated a number of Libyan art exhibitions, with a mission to promote Libya’s artistic and cultural heritage.
Beit El Fezzani Cafe was a cultural hub in west London serving Libyan food and catering, and selling art, paintings, pottery, tiles, basketry and hand-made crafts.
The venue served as a vibrant cultural centre bringing together poets, artists, charities and organisations. It regularly collaborated with the local community to host events such as bazaars, story telling events and musical performance. The British-Moroccan society, Jordanian forum and Palestinian Forums held monthly gatherings there making it a hub of cultural dialogue and exchange. After two and a half years, and despite its success as a vibrant cultural hub, the venture came to an end. We had to leave the premises, and we are now seeking another venue to continue our business.
As an artist and curator I have coordinated and participated in numerous exhibitions and cultural festivals across the UK, including in London, Newcastle and. Leicester. My work often celebrates Libyan traditional costume and jewellery, combining academic research with creative exploration..
My latest participation was with Konooz foundation in an auction and art exhibition at the Jumeirah hotel in Knightsbridge. My painting depict the traditional dress of
Libyan women, adorned with gold jewellery symbolising cultural richness while highlighting the deep roots of identity and heritage.
I have also curated the Libyan crafts exhibition in 2022, that was sponsored by the Libyan embassy in London. The exhibition was held at the Double Three Hilton hotel. My latest art exhibition was ‘The Spirit of Identity’ at the Bhavan centre in Kensington. The exhibition highlighted the work of three Libyan artists and a book launch event for the Libyan author Azza Maghur celebrating her book ‘The chronicles of a forest’ sponsored by Dar El-Fergani publishers and bookshop.
Since the 2011 revolution, Libyan art witnessed a dynamic transformation across cities in both the East and West of Libya. During the war artists expressed their horror, pain and hopes for change. Then later, new art houses, galleries and cultural clubs emerged offering spaces where people could express their thoughts, culture, future aspirations and social concerns through art. This period saw the rise of many young and talented artists, with increasing encouragement and recognition for women to pursue painting and other artistic practices.
The Old City of Tripoli has become recently a vibrant centre for art, marked by the establishment of an old private building that was converted in 2019, into the first space to showcase art. Eskander Art House was founded by a Libyan art collector called Mustafa Eskander. It quickly became a popular platform for artists from across Libya to showcase their artwork.
Rich in history, the Old City reflects layers of cultural heritage, with architecture shaped by the Ottoman Empire and the Karamanli rulers (1711-1835), who built mosques and expanded the red castle embellished with decorative tiles and architectural details. The red castle, a historic landmark stands in the Old city where art, culture and tourism flourished in this unique setting.
Architect Shefa Salem is a young talented artist from Benghazi. Shefa brings both precision and imagination to her visual art, with particular focus on Libya’s heritage and identity.
“I adore studying history and its details. For that reason, I choose to bring forth images of the distant past in all its depth and recompose them in paintings that reflect that past” she explains Her reconstruction of ancient history has resonated strongly with audiences. One of her most celebrated works is a painting of Silphium, a plant once unique to Libya and valued in the ancient world.
Visual Artist-Printmaker Hajer Deyaf is a Libyan-American artist whose practice centres on oil painting and printmaking, with a focus on themes of heritage, identity, and the central role of women as carriers of culture. Her art reflects the dialogue between memory and belonging, shaped by her experience of living in the diaspora while remaining deeply rooted in Libyan traditions. For Hajer, painting women is both instinctive and symbolic.
“Painting women always felt instinctive to me. It wasn’t a deliberate choice but something that
evolved naturally. When I think of power, beauty, and resilience, I think of women in my life, my mother”, she explains. Her first solo exhibition ‘Libyan Girl’ was at Eskander Art House, where she celebrated Libya’s beauty and history through the figure of the women, portraying her as a symbol of cultural memory.
Mixed-Media & Collage Artist Nasser El Barouni is a self-taught Libyan artist with Amazigh roots, known for his intricate collage and mixed-media works. His art celebrates the richness of Libyan identity and cultural heritage, weaving together traditional motifs and textiles. He combines silver jewellery and traditional embellishments he has collected over the years, to create compositions that tell stories of identity and belonging. Al-Waddan motif seen in his art work inspired by the desert wild life, is a recurring Amazigh symbol in Libyan textiles and often seen in Klim (traditional rugs).
His artistic vision centres on the preservation of Libyan heritage through visual storytelling. By transforming cultural elements into layered compositions. El Barouni creates pieces that serve both as artistic expressions and symbolic souvenirs.
In recent years, contemporary Libyan art has evolved beyond mere creativity to become a powerful form of expression and resistance. It serves as a tool to challenge injustice, raise awareness and engage with questions of identity, history and social transformations. For many Libyan artists, art is not only a reflection of personal vision but also an act of cultural
activism.
Libyan women have emerged in contemporary art, celebrated as symbols of strength,
beauty and resilience. Female artists are increasingly visible in the art scene, asserting their voices and perspectives.
Many artists focus on Libya’s historical and cultural identity, connecting modern artwork
with the past. The Amazigh cultural heritage serves as a rich source of inspiration, with traditional motifs, symbols and historical narratives reinterpreted in contemporary painting and mixed-media.
Contemporary Libyan art functions as a form of activism; it educates, preserves heritage and amplifies marginalised voices. Artists demonstrate how painting and mixed media can reconnect Libyans with their history, express aspirations for the future, and inspire both local
and international audiences.
Piers Secuanda: In March 2001, the Taliban destroyed the 6th Century Bamiyan Buddhas in
Afghanistan. This hit me like a brick to the side of the head, I simply couldn’t understand why a pair of monumental sculptures carved into cliffs in Afghanistan suddenly had to be destroyed.
It bothered me greatly. In 2001 the internet was still very young and it was very hard to find
information that did anything more than scratch the surface in trying to explain what was happening. In retrospect I think that the lack of clear information and the conscious belief of the Taliban which was told to the world, that somehow this action was going to improve the lives of people in Afghanistan, left me stunned. It felt like too big and dire a statement to absorb but at the same time, I felt a need to try and understand this through my art. I just didn’t know at that time how this would happen.
Six months later, still the same year, 2001, on a Saturday afternoon I was in New York City at a downtown camera shop called J&R Cameras, a downtown camera shop trying to fix an issue with my digital camera. A few days later, a few block down the street from where I had been, this happened.
We’re all very familiar with September 11th 2001 and what unfolded on that day. When I saw these pictures on TV I understood that there was a correlation between the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas and the targeting of the Twin Towers. What I mean by this is that both were iconic and proud symbols, revered for very different qualities, but which certain extremist religious practices couldn’t abide. As a child, my brother and I had pressed our faces against the windows at New Jersey’s Newark airport and peered out into the night at the Twin Towers in the distance in Manhattan. Even as children we understood how important these symbols were. After September 11th I realised that there were obviously forces at work which were far too powerful and persistent for me to ignore, if they were intent on damaging cultural heritage. And if those forces were willing to bring that siege to the place where I lived and make it a part of my life, it was going to find its way into my work. I was unable to let go of this sentiment and I became determined to integrate the noise of geopolitics, somehow, into my studio practice.
On the 7th of July 2005, 4 suicide bombs were detonated on public transport in central London during rush hour. 3 in trains and 1 on a red London double deck bus in Tavistock Square.
This work is a direct reaction to the photos that were published in the media about the bus bombing. The sides of the bus were splayed out and the roof was gone. The orange handrails on the inside of the bus were twisted around and left sticking up above the now exposed top deck.
13 people died as a result of the bus bombing, overall 52 people died on the day and 700 were injured. Terrorism has been in one form or another a periodic feature of London life for a long time. Be it IRA bombing campaigns or more recently, religious extremists. One way or the other I’ve been conscious of terrorism for as long as I can remember.
This is a Taliban Bullet Hole Painting from 2014. The development of the paint craft of my studio practice enabled me to make his work.
For example the fixtures : the damaged panels and the blocks above the panels, which hold the works onto the wall, are both made out of paint.
Tragically in the Spring on 2014 around the time that I made this work, Sardar Ahmad Khan, his wife and his two daughters all died in a Taliban shooting at the Serena Hotel in Kabul, whilst they were sitting down to have a meal in the hotel restaurant. His toddler son was shot in the head and left with brain damage, but he survived, and he now lives in Canada.
Sardar was a fantastic supporter and every time I opened an exhibition of these works he would email or text me and say “Brilliant well done, keep going, no one is coming here, so keep taking it to them. Don’t stop” So I didn’t.
People thought that the Taliban were really the worst form of extremists we could imagine, until ISIS came along in 2014. They proudly made it their mission to destroy ancient sites, museums, monuments, tombs, mosques, churches and libraries and they legalised looting on a vast scale. The Middle East had never before seen such systematic, deliberate destruction of culture, on an industrial scale across two countries, Iraq and Syria simultaneously, using military equipment.
It was completely unprecedented and as we know the world knew about it immediately, because of their use of social media. I knew that this was the biggest cultural cleansing since the Second World War, and since that was the focus of my work at this stage, and the further my work developed the deeper I dug into this subject, the clearer it was that I was going to have to examine what these people were doing.
In early 2018 when I was in the Mosul Museum there hadn’t been a full assessment of the damage to the artefacts remaining an whether or not they could be fully repaired so I had to use a process for moulding which I developed over several years with an ex-Tate gallery conservator. We developed it specifically so that I could take moulds of World War II damage from the exterior walls of the Pergamon Museum in Berlin and from the Blitz damage from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, so this process, which I then used in the Mosul Museum involves painting liquid latex onto the stone. That dries in about ten minutes, and on top of that I apply dental putty. The same thing that dentists mould your teeth with when you’re in the dental chair and that cures in about fifteen minutes. When the dental putty is removed, it lifts a forensic quality reproduction of the stone surface. The latex then peels away from the stone leaving a completely clean surface without any residue.
So I proposed this installation to Paul and the Museum Director Za Sturgis both said that they wanted it. So what you see here is approximately a 2000 piece installation. All parts are made out of my industrial paint. To make these objects, we laser scanned and 3D printed the Ashmolean Museums own Assyrian relief, (which you saw in the previous photo) and used a casting process to merge the 3d print with the smashed stone texture which I moulded in the Mosul Museum. Right down to the tiny crumbs of paint, no larger than finger nail size, every piece has the Mosul museum smashed sculpture texture on its surface.
Hanaa Malallah: It is well known that the technical aspects of my practice include the burning,
distressing and obliterating of material: I have termed this Ruins Technique. Clearly, this technique owns its existence to the lethal face of war. This does not mean that I am reproducing the idea of war. Instead, I am utilizing its intrinsically destructive process to engender the visceral experience of the reality of war irrespective of its geographic/political particular.
This quote from John Berger is a succinct description of the functions of art: ‘’I can’t tell you what art does and how it does it, but I know that art has often judged the judges, pleaded revenge to the innocent and shown to the future what the past has suffered, so that it has never been forgotten. I know too that the powerful fear, whatever its form, when it does this , and that amongst the people such art
sometimes runs like a rumour and a legend because it makes sense of what life’s brutalities cannot, a sense that unites us, for it is inseparable from a justice at last. Art, when it functions like this, becomes a meeting-place of the invisible, the irreducible, the enduring, guts, and honour.’’
‘She /He Has No Picture’ 2019, is wall installation commemorating the civilian victims of Al Amiriyah Shelter calamity. On 13th February 1991 during Gulf War One, 408 people where killed by laser guided smart missal air-raid. The shelter is located at Ai Amiriyah district of Baghdad. When the dust of war settled, small booklet was published in which victim names were listed , but, few of them (100) were combined with personal photographic portrait, others just by
names combine with note, either She has no picture (female) or He has no picture (male).
I have developed an exciting new project that reflects on the parallels and reversals of my life in comparison to that of Gertrude Bell (1868 – 1926), archaeologist and British colonial administrator who established the Iraq Museum and helped to draw the borders of the modern Middle East.
(B)“I don’t know what I should do without your weekly letters, they are the only link I have with the outer world. I do sometimes feel dreadfully isolated. ”
“لاعرف ماذا علي ان افعل بدون رسائلكم الاسبوعية ، انها صلة الارتباط الوحيدة بالعالم الخارجي. بعض الاوقات اشعر اني معزولة بشكل مخيف.“
(M) I don’t know what should I do without daily reading your letters and illustrating them, they are the only link I have to figure out why I am here now. I do all the time feel dreadfully isolated.
لا اعرف ماذا افعل بدون قراءة رسائلك ورسمها يوميا، انها صلة الارتباط الوحيدة التي من خلالها استكشف لماذا انا هنا الان . في كل الاوقات اشعر انني معزولة بشكل مخيف
(B) … that we had promised an Arab Government with British Advisers, and had set up a British Government with Arab Advisers. That’s a perfectly fair statement… (Baghdad, October 10th, 1920, p. 441)
نحن وعدنا بحكومة عربية مع اسشاريين بريطانين، ولكن ما اقمناه هو حكومة بريطانية مع استشاريين عرب. هذا بيان عادل تماما.
(M)…that we had been promised in 2003 a democracy and liberation from dictatorship, and what was set up was a British/American long-term invasion. That’s a perfectly fair statement.
نحن ما وُعدنا به في عام 2003 هو الديمقراطية والتحرير من الدكتاتورية، ولكن ما اقامه البريطانين والامريكان هو احتلال مفتوح المدى
In Baghdad, in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, I used to daily take a red double-decker bus, whether to study, work, or hang around. It was entangled with my memories of the city. I thought it was my own city identity. I celebrated that by producing artworks, for instance, using bus paper tickets which usually I kept.
I fled Baghdad in 2006 because of the 2003 invasion and reached London in 2007, where I discovered that the red double-decker bus was actually, in fact, part of the London identity! My Iraqi identity has consisted of fragments of colonialism and imperialist emblems that the British Empire left in Iraq, in which Gertrude Bell played a fundamental part. We Iraqi have no identity-but an imperial one.
The paraphrasing texts produce a possibility for a subjectivity which could simultaneously be coloniser/colonised, oriental/occidental, nostalgic and exiled, one which opens new perspectives on how to live.
The project here then offers a kind of liminal space of mutual recognition, a new space for negotiation. A kind of hybrid voice performs a strategic reversal of the processes of domination—through disavowal – where distinctions might collapse. The cross-cultural exchanges that take place through these responses enable a re-evaluation of the assumptions of colonial identity.
* Hanaa Malallah is an artist, researcher and educator, based in London. Born in Iraq, she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, and later earned an MA and PhD from the University of Baghdad. In her graduate work, she developed a semiotic approach to art, receiving a doctorate in 2005 for a thesis that uses forms of logic elaborated by modern philosophy to examine the art of ancient Mesopotamia. Since the early 1990s, Malallah has tried to think through destruction as an essential part of the human condition, by treating the material she works with as found objects that she mutilates or disfigures according to what she came to conceptualise in 2007 as a ‘Ruins Technique’.
** Eman Fezzani is a British-Libyan artist, curator and art educator whose work bridges creativity, heritage and cultural dialogue. She holds a Master’s Degree in the History of Art and Architecture of the Islamic Middle East from SOAS University of London and has also pursued studies in art, fashion, design and the history of Asian and Islamic art. She is the founder of Beit El Fezzani a Libyan Cafe that was also a cultural centre where poets, artists, charities and organizations met. As both an artist and a curator, she has coordinated and particiapted in numerous exhibitions and cultural festivals. Her work celebrates Libyan traditional costume and jewellery combining academic research with creative exploration.
***Piers Secuanda was born in London in 1976 and studied painting at Chelsea College of Art in London. Since the late nineties, Piers has developed a studio practice using paint in a sculptural manner, rejecting the limitations imposed by the canvas. Piers’ work has developed into a research-heavy practice, which examines some of the most significant subjects of our time, such as energy and technology history and the deliberate destruction of culture. In August 2010, Secunda visited Afghanistan to make moulds of Taliban bullet damage. In 2021 the Ashmolean Museum commissioned Secunda to produce an ISIS-related work during the refurbishment of their Middle East room. The work merged a 3D print of the Ashmolean Museum’s own Assyrian reliefs with moulded pneumatic drill marks from ISIS-destroyed Assyrian sculptures in the Mosul Museum.
