Cultural Resistance: From Bangladesh to Palestine
Special event
Tuesday, 3 November, 6-8.30 pm
Venue: Proposition
279 Cambridge Heath Road,
London, E2 0EL
Reception entrance on Cambridge Heath Road to the left of the big ‘Proposition’ sign.
Nearest station: Bethnal Green.
To reserve your place, RSVP here. The event is free, but we are accepting donations for The Sameer Project.
Join us for a discussion on international cultural resistance, the legacy of the July uprising in Bangladesh, and what lessons are to be understood from cultural resistance movements, from Bangladesh, Iran, Lebanon and Palestine.The evening will bring together cultural activists to share stories of struggle and resistance, to ask what responsibilities cultural workers, and institutions have in the face of censorship, rising fascism, and genocide.
Speakers include: Shahidul Alam, Sarona Bedwan who will chair the event, Rahila Haque, Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso, and Maryam Tafakory for an evening of solidarity, short films, and discussion.
This event is co-hosted by Artists for Palestine UK and Book Works, in association with Drik Picture Library, and supported by the British Council’s Connections Through Culture Programme.
Shahidul Alam is a Bangladeshi photographer, writer, curator and activist. He founded Drik Picture Library, Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, the Chobi Mela International Photography Festival and Majority World. A National Geographic Explorer at Large, Emeritus, he was among Time magazine’s Persons of the Year and has chaired the international jury of World Press Photo. His books include The Tide Will Turn (New York Times Best Art Books 2020) and My Journey as a Witness. He received the Ekushey Padak, Bangladesh’s second-highest civilian award, contributes to Al Jazeera, and holds professorial duties at SOAS. He sailed with the Freedom Flotilla
Sarona Bedwan is co-director of Makan, a Palestinian led organisation that mobilizes political education to bolster the wider Palestinian liberation movement. Currently undertaking a PhD in Comparative Literature on Palestinian poetry and fiction at Kings College London, she has co-developed with Dr. Danah Abdulla ‘Countless Palestinian Futures’, a discussion-based game that centres imagination as an educational tool to create tangible ideas around Palestinian futures and returns. In addition to her work with Makan, Sarona is a writer, and is training to become a politicised-somatics practitioner as a part of Healing Justice London’s Movement Medicine programme
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso is a climate cultural worker, curator, facilitator and activist from South Lebanon. Her focus areas include environmental justice and the nature crisis, Palestinian liberation, decolonial cultural resistance, and freedom of expression. She works with Julie’s Bicycle, is a founding member of White Kite Collective, and a board member with Book Works and the Palestinian Initiative for Climate Strategy.
Rahila Haque is an independent curator, writer and researcher. In 2026, she completed her PhD at the Centre for Transnational Art, Identity and Nation (TrAIN) at Chelsea College of Arts, UAL. She has been a curator and producer for exhibitions and programmes at Somerset House Studios, Hayward Gallery, Venice Biennale, Camden Art Centre; a member of the transnational research project Worlding Public Cultures at UAL; and a research fellow at Iniva. She is co-editor of a forthcoming publication on the work of the Dhaka-based artist-led initiative Britto Arts Trust. She is a member of the organising collective Artists for Palestine UK.
Maryam Tafakory is an artist-filmmaker, born and raised in Iran, who works across moving image, text, and performance. Her practice unfolds through long, unfinished research and gathers into constellations of speculative nonfiction pieces. Solo screenings and exhibitions of her work include: National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC), Eye Film Museum (Amsterdam), Barbican Centre (London), Project Arts Centre (Dublin), BOZAR (Brussels), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis) and Academy Museum (Los Angeles), among others. Her work has been featured in The Guardian, Le Monde, and Les Cahiers du Cinéma, among others.
Artists for Palestine UK is a network of artists and culture workers standing together in support of Palestinian liberation. Launched in 2015, we work to end cultural and institutional complicity in Israel’s crimes against the Palestinian people.
Book Works is dedicated to commissioning non-conforming works, offering a generative space for artists and writers that don’t fit into easily definable categories within mainstream publishing.
Through our work we pursue a programme that foregrounds social justice in the arts and our desire to work with artists and writers from the global majority and those from liberation or historically marginalised groups, often unrecognised by mainstream institutions. We are non-profit organisation, a publisher and bookbinding studio, a registered charity, and receive NPO funding from Arts Council England.
Drik Picture Library is an independent media organisation established in 1989, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Drik’s mission is to collect, sell and distribute high-quality images of the majority world by the majority world. Set up on principles of social equality, it uses media to highlight issues relating to human rights, democracy and governance.
