Digital Commission: There is a Baba in Our House

World premiere of the first in the OSUN Center for Human Rights and the Arts' annual digital commissions, featuring a Q&A with artist Leil Zahra and Nubian Geographic hosted by Dr. Hanan Toukan (Bard College Berlin).
في بيتنا بابا

Parting from a personal narrative, and using references from both popular culture and key political events, artist Leil Zahra Mortada uses the performative aspect of nationalism, and its propaganda, to contribute to a much-needed debate around Pan-Arabism and its consequences, history and present.

In this political coming-of-age, the video highlights the blurred lines between the Father figure as both the patriarch of the family and the leader of the nation. The author holds their father’s bias accountable despite the latter’s unquestionable commitment to social justice.

Leil Zahra Mortada is a transfeminist queer activist, researcher, and artist born in Beirut. Their film work includes the archival project “Words of Women from the Egyptian Revolution” and the awarded experimental short Breakup in 9 Scenes. Leil is behind the collaborative project Sound Frontier, a music research project focusing on marginalized music and sound art from a decolonial and feminist perspectives. They are a researcher and trainer on digital security, online privacy and open-source investigations. Recently they concluded a fellowship at Mozilla Foundation on the impacts of content policing on social media platforms. Their work focuses on queer and feminist politics, archiving, migration, anti-racism and decolonialism.

Nubian Geographic was founded in 2015 to document Nubia and its geography, history, language, wildlife and more. As a Nubian initiative, it works to counter the systemic erosion of the Nubian culture through research, documentation, producing resources and raising awareness. Nubian Geographic aims to become the origin of a Nubian Scientific Society that would help to preserve and revive Nubia's rich culture and history.

This is an online event. Join via Zoom.

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For more information, call 845-758-6822.

Time: 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm EDT/GMT-4

Location: Online Event

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