Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti of artist and architectural collective DAAR (Decolonising Art Architecture Research) lead a conversation with invited guests on the occasion of the launch of their exhibition ‘Stateless Heritage’ at The Mosaic Rooms in London.
The works in the exhibition focus on Dheisheh refugee camp in Palestine, which traces its history back to 1949, at the time of the start of the Nakba, when Palestinians were displaced by the founding of the state of Israel. The exhibition presents DAAR’s nomination to register the camp as a World Heritage Site. The nomination is intended as a provocation, to expose how the definition of heritage is not universal as claimed, but subject to nation state control and has colonial foundations.
DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti – are joined in conversation by:
Corinna Gardner is Senior Curator of Design and Digital at the V&A where she leads the museum’s Rapid Response Collecting programme. Corinna’s research focuses on contemporary product and digital design and the role they play in society. Current projects include a new permanent gallery for 20th and 21st century design at the V&A and an exhibition about the promise and problem of plastic today.
Anita Bakshi is the author of Topographies of Memories: A New Poetics of Commemoration (2017, Palgrave Macmillan). Following several years in architectural practice she received her PhD in the History and Theory of Architecture from Cambridge University with the Conflict in Cities Research Programme. She now teaches at Rutgers University, Department of Landscape Architecture. Her research focuses on contested landscapes and histories, environmental justice, and the relationship between architecture and inequality.
Robert Mull, Professor of Architecture and Design at the University of Brighton and Visiting Professor at Umeå University where he is developing the Global Free Unit with a number of international partners. Much of his work as an architect and educator is focussed on communities affected by the refugee crisis in Greece, Turkey and France.
ABOUT DAAR
DAAR is an architectural collective that combines conceptual speculations and pragmatic spatial interventions, discourse and collective learning. The artistic research of Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti are situated between politics, architecture, art and pedagogy. In their practice art exhibitions are both sites of display and sites of action that spill over into other contexts: built architectural structures, the shaping of critical learning environments, interventions that challenge dominant collective narratives, the production of new political imaginations, the formation of civic spaces and the re-definition of concepts. Their book Refugee Heritage (2021) was published this year by Art and Theory.
DAAR’s exhibition ‘Stateless Heritage’ continues at The Mosaic Rooms in London until 30th January 2022. Further details are available at www.mosaicrooms.org
This panel series is presented in partnership with The Mosaic Rooms.
ABOUT THE MOSAIC ROOMS
The Mosaic Rooms is London’s free gallery dedicated to promoting and supporting contemporary culture from the Arab world and beyond. We do this through contemporary art exhibitions, multidisciplinary events (including film screenings, current affairs, talks, book launches and more) artist residencies and learning and engagement programme. We work in partnership with local, national and international organisations to disseminate our arts programme to a wide and diverse audience. The Mosaic Rooms are a project of the A. M. Qattan Foundation.
ABOUT THE ARCHITECTURE FOUNDATION
For 30 years, the Architecture Foundation has brought together professionals from across the built environment to discuss and act on issues related to design and the built environment. With a renewed focus on the city and the critical intersection of architecture and politics, the Architecture Foundation works to effect meaningful change on policy and practice.
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