REVOLUTION MUST MEAN LIFE
By Maysam Ghani in collaboration with Labour4Palestine
With poetry at the core, this project weaves together film, music, installation, and performance. Tracing the “crevice between hope and despair”, a space that Palestinians know all too well, the work presents a glimpse into the intersections of the labour movement and the Palestinian liberation movement. The project amplifies a collective call to action from Labour For Palestine that transcends BDS resolutions and highlights the central role of workers’ struggles in the resistance against the Zionist regime. This work was envisioned and supported through a series of interviews with organizers from Labour for Palestine on Turtle Island and organizers on the ground in Palestine, situated in Al Khalil, Nablus, Qalqilya, and Ramallah.
The violent attacks on Palestinians throughout 2021 exposed realities of settler colonialism, apartheid and occupation in ways the world could no longer shy away from. Taking the lead from Palestinians on the ground, dockworkers to labour unionists mobilized en masse against the ongoing oppressive systems of occupation, ethnic cleansing, and land theft. Revolution Must Mean Life explores the power of the people and all the ways that they create cracks, breaks and fissures within an oppressive system.
This project was developed through Mayworks’ Labour Arts Catalyst with Nasim Asgari and is co-presented with Whippersnapper Gallery and Trinity Square Video.
Revolution Must Mean Life Exhibition
May 4th to May 31st
Whippersnapper Gallery (View from outside 24/7)
Gallery visit with Maysam Ghani and Youssef Mutawe
Sunday May 22nd, 2-4PM
Revolution Must Mean Life Poetry Reading
Friday May 6th, 7PM at the Living Voice
United Steelworkers Hall
and Saturday May 28th, 1PM at Mayworks Closing Celebration
Dentonia Park
MAYSAM GHANI
Maysam Ghani is a Muslim settler with Palestinian and Syrian roots, who was born and raised in Tkaronto (Toronto). Maysam is an aspiring educator, poet, and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement (Toronto Chapter) where she is committed to seeking collective liberation. In her work, she has explored questions of settler colonialism, maternal lineages, food histories, and more. She is grounded in her community and seeks to nurture healing, justice, and generosity in her organizing. She has published pieces in the academic journal New Sociology: Journal of Critical Praxis (2020), in addition to the Queen’s Journal of Indigenous Studies (2019), Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Scholarship Anthology (2019), and Collective Reflections (2018). She was awarded 2nd place for the 2020 Ghassan Kanafani Resistance Arts Anthology. She was a featured panelist at the international Palestine Writes Festival, speaking on a panel entitled “Architects of Our Narrative” for emerging Palestinian writers. She was a featured poet at the Canadian Spoken Word Festival in 2019 and has performed poetry in two productions of Down There. Catch her reciting poems at your local Palestine solidarity action!
Labour4Palestine
Labour4Palestine is a pan-Canadian network of labour activists who work to deepen solidarity with Palestinian workers and people in their struggle for liberation.
WHIPPERSNAPPER GALLERY
Whippersnapper Gallery is an artist-run centre committed to the cultivation of inclusive spaces for emerging visual and media arts, community arts, and experimental forms of exhibition making. We provide artists and cultural producers with a flexible platform and exhibition space to expand the parameters of their professional practice. Whippersnapper is structured to encourage peer-to-peer mentorship and promote success by the artists’ own standards. Through critical and diverse programming, Whippersnapper initiates new relationships and unexpected conversations. We facilitate exchange between artists and local communities, and between a spectrum of emerging and established art communities throughout Toronto and Canada.
TRINITY SQUARE VIDEO
Founded in 1971, Trinity Square Video is one of Canada’s first artist-run centres and its oldest media arts centre. Trinity Square is a not-for-profit, charitable organization. For 50 years, Trinity Square has been a champion of media arts practices. Their activities are guided by a goal to increase members’ and audiences’ understanding and imagination of what media arts practices can be. Trinity Square strives to create supportive environments, encouraging artistic and curatorial experimentation that challenge medium specificity through education, production and presentation supports. As video-based practices have become increasingly present across disciplines, Trinity Square engages artists and curators in critical investigations into the changing conditions of perception, materiality and the virtual. Trinity Square consider all artistic activities and structures through a process of critical self-reflection, continuously evaluating the ethical positioning of our programming, jury structures, inter-organizational relationships, et cetera.
