PORTFOLIO

Unsettling, an Experimental/Fiction/Documentary Feature Film

Beginning with an anonymous call for a general strike, Unsettling is a possible story that weaves together the fractured Palestinian landscape and insurgent voices and sounds in an unfolding reorientation that provides a deeper understanding of colonization and thinks with the Palestinian people about the future and possibilities of anti-colonial struggle and liberation today.

Link to excerpt : https://vimeo.com/363483593

Password: DocuUnsettle

Training in Practice of Freedom, Video (15 minutes), 2018

Training in the Practice of Freedom is a video in Arabic and English. It explores direct actions related to Black Lives Matter, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, Direct Action Front for Palestine, and Decolonize This Place where theory and research analysis and aesthetics, organizing and action combine to challenge oppression and domination while facilitate decolonial spaces to train in the practice of freedom. Training in the practice of freedom is interested in asking better question for our movements and struggles, and the process is ongoing.

2019 Orleans Architectural Biennale, France

In French and Arabic: “There is a war being waged in our imagination”.

North is a Lie at Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center

Opening Friday, September 14, 7–9pm
On view through December 8, 2018, Tue–Sat, 12–5pm
Free and open to the public
This exhibition is accompanied by public programs featuring guests announced throughout the season. Follow Squeaky Wheel on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, @squeakybuffalo for updates!

The North is a Lie is a claiming of space against the myth of a tolerant and more equitable “North.” Thinking about the futures and histories of communities who have suffered most at the hands of this myth, The North is a Lie present a series of performances, installations, screenings, and potlucks, with the participation of guest artists. This collaboration between Nitasha Dhillon, Rhys Hall, and Elisa Peebles will utilize Squeaky Wheel to gather and provoke questions towards liberation and the possibility of a decolonial existence. This exhibition is accompanied by a brochure featuring newly commissioned writing by Dana McKnight.

http://squeaky.org/event/the-north-is-a-lie/

Cuartion: A Few Short Films That Engage In Struggle at Squeaky Wheel Film and Media Art Center

Presented as part of the public programming for our current exhibition belit sağ: Let Me Remember, this program of short experimental and documentary films revolve around the struggle against white supremacy in the United States, state repression of the Kurdish people, and settler colonialism in Palestine. The screening explores how these works, involving struggles far flung from each other, connect and the common strategies and aesthetics they share. Featuring work by Basma Alsharif, Decolonize This Place, Rhys Hall, Adam Khalil, Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys, and belit sağ. Curated with an introduction by Nitasha Dhillon.

Program (~60 minutes)

Decolonize This Place, Anti-Columbus Day Tour: Decolonize This Museum, digital video, 3:23 minutes; 2016)

Rhys Hall, To Free A Butterfly, digital video, 11:18 min, 2016

Adam Khalil , Zack Khalil, and Jackson Polys, The Violence of a Civilization without Secrets, digital video, 9:43 minutes; 2017

Basma Alsharif, We Began by Measuring Distance, digital video, 19:00 min, 2009

belit sağ, Ayhan and Me, digital video, 14:17 min, 2015

https://squeaky.org/event/engageinstruggle/

Artwork for Forced Labor at NYU Report Abu Dhabi, 2018

Full report: https://www.forcedlaboratnyuad.org/

Anemones (شقائق النعمان)

Anemones is a freely distributed movement-generated publication produced in-between Palestine and New York earlier this year. Anemones thinks with Palestine about the conditions of anti-colonial struggle and decolonial freedom through the frames of Free Palestine, indigenous insurgence, black liberation, de-gentrification, dismantling patriarchy, and more.

Contributors include Karen Barad, David Graeber, Kehaulini Kauanui, Jasbir K Puar, Andrew Ross, and more.

Anemones_English Download

The Lasting Effect, Qalandia International with Ramallah Municipality, Palestine 2018

Documentation of two billboards commissioned by Ramallah municipality, Palestine as part of Qalandia Internationational 2018

First Image (translated from Arabic): Imagine a home without oppression.

Second Image (translated from Arabic): There is war waging in the imagination.

Decolonize This Place, Artist Space, 2016

https://artistsspace.org/exhibitions/decolonizethisplace

A Storm is Blowing from Saadiyat Island, 2016

A Storm is Blowing from Saadiyat Island is a database project in progress by Nitasha Dhillon (MTL Collective). It maps the transnational struggle of South Asian migrant workers in U.A.E. and solidarity action, research and organizing by Gulf Labor Coalition, Global Ultra Luxury Faction, and various NGOs. From workers home countries to the Gulf where they work to actions taking place in NYC, we see images, videos, publications, and whatsapp messages that help us begin to understand an ultra luxury economy and how it functions and, perhaps most importantly, how to resist, build and deepen solidarity as part of a growing decolonizing movemen across borders.

Gulf Labor Artist Coalition Research and Participation in the 2015 Venice Biennale

Panel on Migration and the Gulf Dream with Ashok Sukumaran, Paula Chakarvartty, Nitasha Dhillon, Parimal Sudhakar at Venice Biennale, 2015.

Nitasha Dhillon discussed her experience as an artist and activist involved in Occupy/Strike Debt movements and how this led to her work on migrant labor through the Gulf Labor Coalition and G.U.L.F. Having conducted field work across 3 states in India and the UAE (for the Gulf Labor Report and book), Nitasha presented specific stories of migrant workers and their experiences—as political subjects with their perspectives on organizing and meeting social justice objectives. She also presented on a new collaborative effort, Tea Break that aims to re-orient these discussions back to migrant workers themselves—whether in Delhi, other parts of South Asia or the Gulf and beyond.