In Our Thousands, In Our Millions: Cultural Censorship and Anti-Colonial Solidarity with Palestine

While streets around the world remain sites of mobilization and solidarity for Palestine, many cultural institutions have chosen to reproduce colonial politics of repression. They employ intimidation, using the cancellation or disruption of large and small exhibitions, film festivals, and biennials that showcase Palestinian and pro-Palestinian artists to suppress critical dialogue. In response to this silencing, many artists have pulled their work, protesting the complicity of art institutions and the attempted erasure of anti-colonial solidarity.

“In Our Thousands, In Our Millions: Cultural Censorship and Anti-Colonial Solidarity with Palestine” is a panel discussion with artist and educator Samia Halaby (on recorded video), Anishinaabe-kwe curator, writer, and organizer Wanda Nanibush, artist and filmmaker John Halaka, and moderated by Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Director of Indigenous Programs and Relationality at Forge Project.

The event is co-hosted by the OSUN Center for Human Rights & The Arts at Bard College and Forge Project in response to the current climate in the global art world from Indigenous and Palestinian perspectives. The conversation leans into notions of collective responsibility, creative kinship, narrative sovereignty, and the necessity of new alliances in an art world that increasingly bends to the politics of their governments and the market.

Illustration and design by Haitham Haddad