Date: Thursday, October 10

Time: Noon- 1:30 PM

Location: Online

This event will bring together feminist writers, artists, curators and academics who work in the context of South Kurdistan. In their conversation they will centre the question of how artists and activists in the region address issues around body politics, religious conservatism and intimacy.

Particularly since 2014 and the onslaught of ISIS (or daesh), artists have been chronicling the ways in which women’s bodies are being used as a battlefield between competing religious, political and cultural actors. Disillusioned with party politics, women’s NGOs or foreign donor agendas, a new generation of creatives are curating their own exhibitions, cinema clubs, and reading groups. These initiatives to date remain small, local, self-funded and transient, yet they mark a major shift towards a diversification of spaces for critical engagement and imagining a Kurdistan “otherwise”.