“No Aesthetic Outside My Freedom”: Mourning, Militancy, and Performance

Co-presented with The Poetry Project.

Join us at The Poetry Project for an evening of performances that engage in public mourning of Palestinians martyred by Israel over the past year, while centering the need for ongoing resistance to the forces of empire across the globe. Artists Leila Awadallah, Noel Maghathe, Fadl Fakhouri, Rasha Abdulhadi, and Fargo Nissim Tbakhi will interpret performance scores written by Brandon Shimoda, Christina Sharpe, and Natalie Diaz that ask: How can performance reckon with the immense scale of annihilatory imperial violence? How can it help us connect this moment of colonial mass murder to other such moments across history and geography, to sharpen our analysis and strengthen solidarities? How can it offer ways to mourn that gathers rather than disperses political energies—and supports the urgent work of active, escalating resistance?

This event takes its title from a line in Mahmoud Darwish’s poem “State of Siege” that reads, in Fady Joudah’s translation, “The martyr teaches me: no aesthetic outside my freedom”—a reminder that our art and our grieving must remain grounded in the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

To attend this event, please make a contribution to the Gaza Mutual Aid Collective (via PayPal to Taraalami or Venmo to @yasmafs) and provide a receipt for your donation at the door.

This event is taking place in-person at The Parish Hall at St Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, at 131 E. 10th St, on the corner with 2nd Avenue, in Manhattan. This event will also be livestreamed for free on The Poetry Project’s YouTube channel.

St. Mark’s Church is wheelchair accessible. There are wheelchair-accessible all-gender bathrooms on the ground floor and all-gender bathrooms on the second floor of the church. To access Parish Hall, attendees must pass through the main sanctuary and a corridor. There are two sets of double doors and two single doors to go through. The smallest of these doors at the end of the corridor is 28.5 inches wide. The Poetry Project will arrange for an ASL interpreter for any event with one week’s advance notice. Please call The Poetry Project at 212-674-0910, or email at info@poetryproject.org, in advance of events to arrange accessibility.

Rasha Abdulhadi is calling on you—yes you, even as you read this—to renew your commitment to refusing and resisting genocide everywhere you find it. May your commitment to Palestinian liberation deepen your commitment to your own. May your exhaustion deepen your resolve and make you immovable. May we all be drawn irresistibly closer to refusals that are as spectacular as the violence waged against our peoples.

Leila Awadallah is a dancer and choreographer making and moving in a body flowing with Palestinian blood, embodying Mediterranean ways and waves while living on Turtle Island in Minneapolis and sometimes Beirut. She is the artistic director of Body Watani Dance project, in collaboration with her sister Noelle. She was a McKnight Dancer (2022), Jerome Hill (2021) and Daring Dances (2019) fellow, and was one of the Arab America Foundation’s 30 Under 30 (2022).

Fadl Fakhouri is an artist whose work centers on dots, lines, and color as a method of pursuing definition and positionality. Through the use of body, images, and contextualized objects, they formulate poetic statements of determination. They have exhibited work at SFAI (San Francisco), A.I.R. (New York City), Times Square (New York City), Jacobs Institute (Berkeley), Worth Ryder (Berkeley), the Cincinnati Art Museum, and the Jewish Museum (New York City).

Noel Maghathe is a multidisciplinary artist and curator based in Cincinnati. Through sculpture, performance, and light, they explore themes of identity, cultural memory, and longing. They have exhibited and performed both nationally and internationally, including at the Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center and the Abrons Arts Center (New York City), and shared curatorial projects at the Roots & Culture Contemporary Arts Center (Chicago) and the CUE Art Foundation and apexart (New York City).

Fargo Nissim Tbakhi is a Palestinian performance artist. He is calling on you to join with the revolutionary masses across the globe in fighting for the survival and liberation of Palestinians and all oppressed people. We are bound up with one another. Anywhere and everywhere you are, you can get in the way of the death machine; hold somebody’s hand tight and get in the way together.

Since 1966, The Poetry Project has expanded access to literature, education, and opportunities for sharing one’s creative work in a counter-hierarchical, radically open space and community. Premised on the vision that cultural action at the local level can inspire broader shifts in public consciousness, The Project is committed to developing and collaborating on replicable program models that challenge persistent social narratives, especially through the verbal reframing made possible in poetry. We do this work through a combination of live readings, performances, lectures, events, and workshops, in addition to literary and critical publications and emerging writers and curatorial fellowship programs.