We're back with another FoF collaboration, this time to celebrate the launch of the Rooted Through Realms exhibition by Shaheen Kasmani!

While we all need and desire access to homes, gardens, good food, clean air, and proximity to water, we’ve inherited and are constantly being consumed into systems that are extractive and exploitative, resulting in a severance from the land, which has emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual consequences. If everything is cosmologically connected, then this is also a reflection of the Oneness/oneness that we are being disconnected from. But where there is rupture, there can also be repair.

The series of short films curated for this special programme explores the complexities of our relationship to the land from Palestine, Sudan and Kashmir to the UK itself. Titles include:

The Park (Dancing on the Rubble of Empire) by Arwa Abuwara and Turab Shah (34 mins)

The Flowers Stand Silently, Witnessing by Theo Paganopoulos (17 mins)

Don't be long, Little bird by Reem Jubran (23 mins)

An Orphanage of Memories by Rayit Hashmat Qazi (21 mins)

Mawtini by Fateema Al-Hamaydeh Miller (19 mins)

Where the Wind Blows by Hana Elias (16 mins)

99 Names: My Liberation is Tied to Yours by Marwa Eltahir (11 mins)

Tickets

We have a three-tiered ticket system with Standard tickets priced at £7.50 (plus Eventbrite fee) / £10 on the door. Tickets include a warm meal (plant-based and gluten-free options available). Please feel free to bring your own non-alcoholic drinks.

Access

The venue has step-free access, baby-changing facilities, and a working lift onsite. The exhibition is held in the Red Studio, which is accessible via one flight of stairs. This event will be held in the Grey Studio, located on the ground floor.

Prayer mats will be available for those who wish to pray onsite.

Further information, including details on how to get to the venue, can be found here.

This programme will be running on Crip Time. As a result, we endeavour to reschedule events should any of our contributors not feel well / experience a change in capacity in the lead-up to and / or on the day of the event itself.

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About Rooted Through Realms

Rooted Through Realms, is a solo exhibition featuring a new body of work by artist Shaheen Kasmani. This exhibition calls upon us to bear witness and connect the dots between ongoing settler colonialism, climate change, and local and global injustices, whilst also encouraging us to employ our senses and otherworldly faculties to collectively imagine new possibilities as inspired by the gardens of paradise.

This exhibition was made possible with support from Arts Council England. Shaheen’s residency and Ort Gallery’s professional development work in the lead up to the exhibition were generously supported by Arts Council England and Paul Hamlyn Foundation.

Shaheen Kasmani is an artist, creative producer, curator and educator. With a MA in Visual Traditional & Islamic Arts, her interests lie in narratives around coloniality and heritage, art, architecture and patterns. Shaheen was the lead curator for the Ramadan Pavilion at the V&A Museum, and co-curated The Past is Now exhibition at Birmingham Museum. She has exhibited her work in the UK and Europe, and guest lectures at universities in the US.

shaheenkasmani.com

@shaheen.kasmani

About the organisers

Falasteen on Film is an expansive cultural organisation that works on political, social, and community issues. These themes are explored through the medium of film and complementary art-based workshops and discussion.

Ort Gallery is a community-led visual arts and poetry organisation practicing equity in the minutiae of our daily work. We create spaces for artists and communities to slow down, unlearn, and rebuild ways of working grounded in care, access and collective wellbeing.

About the venue

Friction Arts is a Birmingham-based arts organisation creating socially engaged projects and programmes from its home at The Edge in Deritend/Highgate. Since 2004, Friction has worked with communities to help people find their voice, tell their stories, build confidence and explore the world and their place within it. Our work is responsive and collaborative, using creative approaches to support individual and social change.

Description supplied by the event organiser.