Have an event that will fit well on our calendar?
- This event has passed.
Visualization as a Language of Resistance
November 16 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Please join La La Lil Jidar at Studio34 with Visualizing Palestine deputy director Jessica Anderson and Professor Huda Fakhreddine in conversation, moderated by Aisha Mershani from La La Lil Jidar, for the book launch of Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation. In addition to discussing the book, Jessica and Huda will explore where the movement for Palestine is today, solidarity with other movements, and the importance of narrative, in all its forms, to fight colonial oppression. The conversation will weave in critical themes including gentrification and police brutality that affect Studio 34’s community, highlighting the intersectionality of movements for justice and liberation.
Come early to mingle, eat/drink, and purchase merchandise, including: La La Lil Jidar posters, Palestine art, and copies of both Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation and Palestinian.
Published by Haymarket Books,Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation is a striking, 400-page collection of 200+ full-color infographics, reflecting over a decade of collaboration by 160+ VP contributors.
Palestinian by award-winning poet and novelist Ibrahim Nasrallah and translated from Arabic by Huda J. Fakhreddine is written during an ongoing genocide in Gaza. These four new poems call out the world’s blindness towards Palestine, its tragedy, and the Nakba that has persisted since 1948.
All tickets sales and proceeds from merchandise will support the Gaza Scholarship Initiative, a mutual aid fundraiser for university students from/in Gaza. This is a sliding scale fundraiser with the goal to reach $5,000.
20 tickets @ $60+ reserve a copy of Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation
The Gaza Scholarship Initiative (GSI) is a coalition of volunteers — academics, writers, and concerned individuals — who have supported over 70 displaced university students from Gaza.
Our mission is to safeguard Palestinian futures by supporting displaced Palestinian students from Gaza who must seek education abroad.
By investing in these students now, we aim to create future leaders who can eliminate the need to leave Gaza for quality education and support the rebuilding process in Palestine.
We also support academics and initiatives working to restore academic learning in Gaza, both virtually and otherwise.
About Jessica Anderson
Jessica Anderson is a human rights researcher based in Michigan. Since 2013, she has been working with Visualizing Palestine, an organization that uses data and research to visually communicate Palestinian experiences to provoke narrative change. Alongside Aline Batarseh and Yosra El-Gazzar, Jessica is a co-editor of the new book Visualizing Palestine: A Chronicle of Colonialism and the Struggle for Liberation, published by Haymarket Books.
SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook): @visualizing_palestine
About Huda J. Fakhreddine
Huda J. Fakhreddine is a writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Arabic Literature at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Metapoesis in the Arabic Tradition (Brill, 2015) and The Arabic Prose Poem: Poetic Theory and Practice (Edinburgh University Press, 2021), and the co-editor of The Routledge Handbook of Arabic Poetry (Routledge, 2023). Her book of creative non-fiction titled Zaman saghīr taḥt shams thāniya (A Brief Time under a Different Sun) was published by Dar al-Nahda, Beirut in 2019. Her translations of Arabic poems have appeared in Banipal, World Literature Today, Nimrod, ArabLit Quarterly, Asymptote, and Middle Eastern Literatures among many others. She is co-editor of Middle Eastern Literatures and an editor of the Library of Arabic Literature.
SOCIAL MEDIA HANDLES (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook): @FakhreddineHuda
About Aisha Mershani
Aisha Mershani is the lead artist in La La Lil Jidar, producing the photography collection called La La Lil Jidar: 20 Years Behind the Apartheid Wall. Aisha Mershani (they/them) was born in Las Vegas, Nevada to an American Jewish mother and a Moroccan Muslim father. Mershani holds a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Anthropology from the University of Redlands in California, and a Master’s and a Ph.D. degree from the UNESCO program in Peace, Development Studies, and Conflict Transformation at the Universitat Jaume I in Castellón de la Plana, Spain.
From 2003-2022 Mershani focused their subject on the Occupied Palestinian Territories. They have photographed military checkpoints, popular demonstrations, house demolitions, destroyed villages, and the daily lives of Palestinians living under the violence of the Israeli Apartheid.
Mershani’s photographs have been exhibited in numerous galleries, multiple publications, as well as many internet news sites over the years to further the awareness of the ongoing situation on the ground in Palestine. They are also one of the artists in the reference book, “Encyclopedia of Arab American Artists”.
Their work comes from a place of concern about the injustices occurring in the Middle East, and a commitment to artistically expose these injustices and educate those outside of the region. The expression of everyday life is the primary objective of their documentary photographic work.
Social Media handle IG: @amershani
About Visualizing Palestine
We use data and research to visually communicate Palestinian experiences to provoke narrative change. We envision a liberated future for Palestinians in a world free from oppression.
Visualizing Palestine creates narrative interventions that convey the urgent and the actionable. We strive to capture not just stories of struggle, but of solidarity, sumud (steadfastness), and inspiration. Our visual tools ensure that factual, liberatory narratives about Palestine are visible, accessible, and interconnected with those of other movements working for collective liberation.
About Studio34
Accessibility note: there is a steep flight of stairs leading up to our space.
STORY
Since 2008, Studio 34 has cultivated a community; it has offered affordable yoga classes, workshops, and art shows for those who seek healing, as well as space for wellness practitioners to provide various forms of therapy, from acupuncture to massage to psychotherapy & more.
In early 2018, community members Adrienne Dolberry and Kari Thompson took over as owners and remain committed to Studio 34 being a space of healing, creativity, and inclusivity for the West Philadelphia community and beyond.
MISSION
Studio 34 is more than a physical space.
We are an energy created by all those that enter and practice here.
This energetic space respects and honors all bodies – encouraging EveryBody/everyone to breathe and move in our healing-centered studio.
Using self-care and expression through yoga, movement, art and other healing modalities – we allow ourselves to reconnect, realign and reclaim our lives as individuals.
We believe that individual self-care directly sustains and supports our community.
We are united together in dialogue, creativity, fun, empowerment and holistic well-being.
