Date: 24 September 2026
Duration: 1:30 hrs, Online
Local Time: France: 07.00 PM (UTC +2), California: 10.00 AM (Pasific Time, PT), Palestine: 8:00 PM (UTC +3), Turkey 8:00 PM (UTC +3).
Location: Online via Zoom (Webinar ID: 849 7688 5368)
Registration: No registration required. Open to non-members.
Speakers: Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent, Majdal Nateel, Shareef Sarhan
Moderator: Esra Yıldız
AICA International (L'Association internationale des critiques d'art/International Association of Art Critics) Forum Committee is organizing an online event titled "Beyond the Ruins: Art, Exile, and Freedom" on Thursday, September 24.
Focusing on the decades-long violence and the current situation in Palestine, American scholars and activists Angela Y. Davis, Gina Dent and Palestinian artists Majdal Nateel, Shareef Sarhan, will explore how art and cultural production respond to conditions of war, displacement, and destruction. The conversation will examine the role of artists and intellectuals as witnesses, and public voices, considering how creative practices can preserve memory, challenge dominant narratives, and create spaces for collective reflection even under extreme circumstances. The discussion will also address the meaning of artistic freedom -and the consequences of its restriction or absence- in times of conflict, censorship, and repression.
This event is organized by AICA International Forum Committee.
About Speakers & Moderator
Angela Y. Davis
Angela Y. Davis is professor emerita of history of consciousness and feminist studies at University of California, Santa Cruz. An activist, writer, and lecturer, her work focuses on prisons, police, abolition, and the related intersections of race, gender, and class. She is the author of many books, from Angela Davis: An Autobiography to Freedom Is a Constant Struggle. Her most recent books include Abolition. Feminism. Now., written with Gina Dent, Erica Meiners and Beth Richie, and a book of essays entitled Abolition: Politics, Practices, Promises, Vol. 1.
Gina Dent
Gina Dent (Ph.D., English&Comparative Literature, Columbia University) is Professor of Humanities and Faculty Director of the Institute of the Arts & Sciences at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she has won awards for her teaching (Dizikes Faculty Teaching Award), advocacy (Chancellor’s Award for Diversity), and research (Innovator of the Year). Currently, she serves as Principal Investigator and Co-Director for Visualizing Abolition, a multidisciplinary project—involving exhibitions, events, fellowships, and academic programs—addressing the global crisis of incarceration through art and visual culture. Her recent collaborative projects grow out of her decades-long work as a social justice advocate—Abolition. Feminism. Now. (co-authored with Angela Davis, Erica Meiners, and Beth Richie, Haymarket 2022), and Seeing through Stone (exhibition catalog, Marquand 2024). She works with several organizations nationally and internationally, including Columbia University’s Center for Justice and Australia’s Sisters Inside, primarily on justice-related concerns. Professor Dent has offered graduate courses and faculty seminars in black feminisms, critical race studies, critical theory and postcolonialism, and legal theory and visual culture in Brazil (Universidade Federal da Bahia, Salvador and Universidade Federal Recôcavo da Bahia, Cachoeira), Colombia (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), and Sweden (Linköping University), as well as at the European Graduate School, and lectures widely on these and other subjects. She previously held positions at Princeton University and Columbia University and was Director of the Institute for Advanced Feminist Research at UCSC, as well as Principal Investigator for the University of California Multicampus Research Group on Transnationalizing Justice.
Majdal Nateel
Born 1987 in Saudi Arabia, Majdal Nateel is a Palestinian visual artist and researcher who grew up in Gaza. She received her Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art from Al-Aqsa University in 2009 and is currently based in Sweden. She is co-founder of Dahaleez, a collective artistic practice exploring the spaces between cultures, bodies, and political realities.
Her artistic research has developed across many contexts. The main inspiration for her early artworks was lived experience -translating the reflections of individual cases on society, as in Memory's Salt (2011) and The Impact of Light and Glass (2013). After 2014, her practice turned toward the value of humanity under political challenge- the repeated threat of war and the ongoing blockade of Gaza. If I Was Not There (2014) dedicated artistic tools to speaking on behalf of children who lost their voices and became victims of the bombs. Under the same context, she produced Without Coffins and The Dream is Possible -works that materialise the concept of return as an individual and collective dream that defines the Palestinian. Between 2017-2019 she developed Lane - an imaginary corridor that helps overcome the feeling of being stuck between borders, unable to travel, shedding light on humanity neglected by politics in our small corner of the world. In Studying the Voids of Amputation (2020-2021) she linked physical amputation and geographic amputation, producing a body of work on this theme. She was recently part of the "Decolonial and Noncanonical Learning in Gaza" programme with the Goethe Institute in Palestine, and completed a 16-month residency at Sommerakademie Paul Klee, hosted by the Bern Academy of the Arts HKB. Majdal's work continues to focus on the impact of colonialism, occupation, and siege on the physical structure of human beings under these conditions.
Shareef Sarhan
Born in Gaza in 1976, he is a visual artist and photographer. He is a founding member of Shababeek for Contemporary Art and a member of the Association of Palestinian Artists. Sarhan received his diploma in Art. He attended Darat Al Funun Academy in Jordan. He received the Bronze Award at the Festival of Arab Photographers in 2008 and the Recognition Award in 2007. Sarhan produced a picture book titled "Gaza Live." His work was exhibited in Gaza, Ramallah, Jerusalem, Amman, the United States, France, Germany, and Italy.
Esra Yıldız
Esra Yıldız is an art and cultural historian and sociologist, and is currently an Associate Professor and Director of Cultural Management MA Program at İstanbul Bilgi University. She studied Environmental Engineering (BSc, Istanbul Technical University), Art History (MA, PhD, ITU), and Sociology (BA, Istanbul University). She pursued her postdoctoral studies at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and EHESS (Paris). She has published articles in Critical Arts, African Arts, International Journal of Arts Management – IJAM, Art in Translations, Routledge, and Intellect Books. She was the President of AICA Turkey (2024-2025) and is the Vice President of AICA International (2024-2027). Her latest documentary film, Stateless, was screened at national and international festivals and awarded a special mention.