Event
ARC @ TransCultural Exchange: International Opportunities in the Arts
Boston
Primary venues for ARC events:
Massachusetts College of Art and Design, Digital and Media Center
621 Huntington Ave, Boston, MA 02115 (Saturday events)
Emmanuel College
400 Fenway, Boston, MA 02115 (Sunday event)
Paid event – Registration required
ARC has been invited to organize three sessions at the TransCultural Exchange: International Opportunities in the Arts Conference that takes place November 4-6 in Boston, Massachusetts. ARC will host a keynote event, a panel, and a general safety training that will address topics such as artists under attack, dissident artists in exile, and the role of artists as political actors. We hope to see you there!
General Safety Training for Artists | 11:45 – 1:00 pm on Saturday, November 5
When an artist first faces risk, there are not a lot of roadmaps and the experience can be incredibly isolating and disorienting. This general safety training for artists will explore topics such as defining and understanding risk, preparing for threats, fortifying digital safety, documenting persecution, finding assistance, and recovering from trauma.
The general safety training will be led by Julie Trébault, director of the Artists at Risk Connection.
*The tips, strategies, and lessons that will be shared in this training were drawn from the testimony of artists who have faced intense persecution, including the Cuban performance artist Tania Bruguera, Lebanese singer Hamed Sinno, American visual artist Dread Scott, and Kenyan filmmaker Wanuri Kahiu, as well as the research and expertise of ARC’s vast network of partners. For more information on how artists can protect themselves, be sure to check out ARC’s A Safety Guide for Artists at https://artistsatriskconnection.org/guide .
Artists Under Attack, Artists As Political Actors | 5:45-6:45pm on Saturday, November 5
As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to reshape society at all levels, authoritarian regimes are exploiting the sense of “national emergency,” leading to ever more crackdowns on artists and those who creatively dissent, often criminalizing artists under the guise of “spreading disinformation.” In the face of these challenges, artists have emerged as political actors and protest leaders, developing powerful new ways of resisting, mobilizing, and educating. In Cuba, Myanmar, and Belarus, artists have been at the forefront of mass demonstrations, supplying protest anthems and posters while drawing international awareness to human rights abuses in their countries. Government and state security forces have retaliated against artists with harassment, censorship, detention, forced disappearances, and other forms of persecution. In this panel, we will explore the relationship between COVID-19, authoritarianism, and the role of artists as political dissenters. We will discuss the increasing number of threats facing artists around the world in light of these challenges and how artists can best prepare themselves to address risk, and what unlikely opportunities may arise out of times of unrest. We will also provide an overview of the available resources for artists at risk, including opportunities for funding, relocation, and legal assistance.
Tania Bruguera, Cuban Artist and Activist
Omaid Sharifi, Afghan Street Artist
Liudmyla Nychai, Ukraine Artist, Curator and Community Activist
Julie Trébault, Director, Artists at Risk Connection (moderator)
Dissident Artists in Exile Share Their Stories | 2:15-4:00pm on Sunday, November 6
Artists who experience threats as a result of their creative work — including verbal or physical harassment, detention or imprisonment, and even death threats — are often forced to leave their countries to protect themselves, their families, and their livelihoods. Artists seeking asylum assistance and/or looking for support in exile make up a substantial portion (13 percent) of ARC’s requests from at-risk artists. Although the experience of exile can be isolating, confusing, and emotionally taxing, many exiled artists are able to acclimate to their new homes and find new creative communities. Opportunities to relocate can give threatened artists another chance to continue to create their work and have their voices heard even across borders. In this panel, artists currently in exile will share their experiences relocating and discuss the opportunities enabled their relocation, providing valuable insights into how they obtained visas, applied to international residency and relocation programs, and more. They will also delve into the struggles they have faced in acclimating to new environments — which can often entail the loss of a support system, learning a new language, and recovering from psychological trauma — and how they have continued their creative endeavors during their time in exile.
Mai Khoi, Vietnamese Singer and Activist
Ahmed Naji, Egyptian Novelist
Julie Trébault, Director of the Artists at Risk Connection (ARC) (Moderator)
Speakers’ biographies
Mai Khoi is an award-winning pop star, described as the “Lady Gaga of Vietnam” and compared to Russian artist-activists Pussy Riot. When she decided to use her platform to criticize the Government of Vietnam’s censorship and lack of democracy she faced harassment, surveillance, and was eventually forced to leave her home country. In 2018 she received the Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent in recognition of her democracy activism. To date Khoi has released eight albums and she is currently an Artist Protection Fund Fellow at the University of Pittsburgh.
Omaid Sharifi is an Artivist Curator and President at ArtLords and Wartists and Scholar at Risk Fellow at Harvard University. ArtLords and Wartists are grassroots movements of artists and volunteers motivated by the desire to pave the way for social transformation and behavioral change through employing the soft power of art and culture as a non-intrusive approach. Sharifi is a Millennium Leadership Fellow with Atlantic Council, Asia Society 21, and American Foreign Relations Council-Rumsfeld Fellow. He is also a Board Member of World Trade Centre Kabul, Board Member of Free Speech Hub Kabul, and Steering Committee Member of Afghanistan Mechanism for Inclusive Peace.
Tania Bruguera is a Cuban artist whose work has focused on installation and performance. Her work is in the permanent collections of many institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art, and Bronx Museum of the Arts, and the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana. Bruguera’s work pivots around issues of power and control, and several of her works interrogate and re-present events in Cuban history. As a result of her art actions and activism, Bruguera has been arrested and jailed several times. She is currently a senior lecturer in media and performance at Harvard University.
Ahmed Naji is an Egyptian novelist and author of four books, including The Use of Life (2014) and Rotten Evidence: Reading and Writing in Prison (2020). In early 2016, Naji was imprisoned on charges of “violating public modesty” and was sentenced following complaints about sexual content in his book The Use of Life. Naji spent 10 months in prison until May 2017 when he was conditionally released, though subject to a travel ban pending appeal of his case. A year later, the court overturned his original sentence, replaced prison time with a fine, and lifted Naji’s travel restrictions. In July 2018, he fled Egypt and now lives in the United States. Naji has nevertheless continued to write: He was appointed a City of Asylum fellow at the Beverly Rogers, Carol C. Harter Black Mountain Institute in 2019). Naji is the 2016 PEN/Barbey Freedom to Write honoree.
Liudmyla (Lucy) Nychai is the curator of the Nazar Voitovich Art Residence (NVAIR) in the Ukraine, the project coordinator of the NGO Congress of Cultural Activists (leading the direction of Art Mobility), an independent researcher, art critic and curator-at-large of Lite-Haus Gallery Berlin. Since 2013 she has been researching art residency practices in the world, conducting lectures and consulting culture managers in the Ukraine. In the process of reforming cultural policy in Ukraine, her NGO lobbied for the support of art mobility and the priority of this area for public funding. She opened an art residence as a laboratory for testing various formats. In 2018 she founded the International Exchange Program with German and Slovak partners. In 2020, she conducted the first virtual program using 3D Internet tools, entitled the Artist is Absent. In 2021, she initiated the Digital Art Mobility Conference – an international dialog about the digital practice of art residences; and, at the end of 2021, she became a Board member of the CryptoArt Ukraine (CAU).
Julie Trébault is the director of the Artists at Risk Connection. Prior to joining PEN America, she was the Director of Public Programs at the Museum of the City of New York and the Center for Architecture. Prior to moving to New York, she worked at the National Museum of Ethnology in the Netherlands, where she established a network of 116 museums. From 2004 to 2007, she was responsible for higher education and academic events at the Musée du quai Branly (Paris).
