Creativity in Confronting Racism
Channel: SOAS University of London
Date: 26/05/2021

'Creativity in Confronting Racism', an online discussion on the processes and inspiration for creatives involved in challenging racism in different art forms. It was run by the Brunei Gallery, SOAS. The speakers were Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Lowkey and Faisal Hussain, in conversation with SOAS's Dr Amina Yaqin

Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is an educator, writer and poet from Leeds, West Yorkshire. She graduated from SOAS with an MA in Postcolonial Studies. She is the author of poetry collection, Postcolonial Banter, co-author of the anthology, A Fly Girl’s Guide to University: Being a woman of colour at Cambridge and other institutions of power and elitism; co-essayist in I Refuse to Condemn: resisting racism in times of national security, and Cut From the Same Cloth? as well as host of the Breaking Binaries podcast. Her work disrupts understandings of history, race, knowledge and power, interrogating the political purpose of narratives about Muslims, migrants, gender and violence. She is less interested in disproving the ‘truth’ of such narratives and more interested in asking what systemic violence they exist to justify. She has written for The Guardian, Independent, Al-Jazeera, gal-dem and her poetry performances have millions of views online. Suhaiymah is currently a Visiting Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London and her poetry, articles and books can be found on University and school syllabi. Suhaiymah works to equip herself and others with the tools to resist structural oppression by unlearning the knowledge society and the education system have instilled in us.

Lowkey is a British-Iraqi rapper and activist. He graduated from SOAS with an MA in Near and Middle Eastern Studies. Lowkey entered the political scene in 2009 during the Stop The War protests against Operation Cast Lead in Gaza, quickly establishing himself as a unique and uncompromising voice within UK hip-hop. At the age of 24, he had recorded a Fire in the Booth for BBC 1Xtra that would go on to strike more than 5 million hits on Youtube. In the same year, he participated in a US speaking tour with the American academic, Norman Finkelstein – his lyrics at the cutting edge of political debate.

Faisal Hussain (www.faisalhussain.com) creates work that questions perceptions, undermines lazy stereotypes and highlights missing histories and overlooked facts. Whether in a gallery or a sign outside a kebab shop, his cross-disciplinary practice is often presented in varied environments to engage with diverse audiences. Using archive and personal memory as starting points, his work explores the representation and understanding of South Asian culture and identity through the media, government, communities and individuals. His current exhibition – ‘Suspect Objects Suspect Subjects’ (www.suspectobjects.com) is on display at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS and a number of other works are currently part of other exhibitions at Eastside Projects and the Ikon gallery in Birmingham. His art has allowed him to work with a variety of different universities and to speak internationally on questions of security, criminology, immigration, anti-racism and cultural studies. He is also the Director of True Form Projects (www.trueformprojects.com) which provides a variety of benefits to communities by collecting oral histories, artefacts and personal stories.

Amina Yaqin is Reader in Urdu and Postcolonial Studies at SOAS. Her monograph Gender, Sexuality and Feminism in Pakistani women's poetry is forthcoming with Anthem Press in 2021. She is co-author with Peter Morey of Framing Muslims: Stereotyping and Representation after 911(Harvard University Press, 2011) and has co-edited, Contesting Islamophobia: media, politics and culture (IB Tauris/Bloomsbury 2019) and a number of other books. She has published widely on contemporary contexts of Muslim life as well as the politics of culture in Pakistan where she grew up. Her commentary and interviews have been aired by the BBC, SkyNews, EuroNews, TRT World, Indus News, Pakistan Television Network. She has written for The National UAE, The Times Higher Education, The British Film Institute and The Conversation. She has been co-director of the Muslims, Trust and Cultural Dialogue and participated in producing a report on HM Government’s Prevent duty which was launched at the House of Lords in 2017. Currently, she is Chair of the Decolonising Working Group, Director of the SOAS Festival of Ideas, Chair of the Centre for the Study of Pakistan and Programme Co-Convenor for BA English.

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

SOAS’s Brunei Gallery is pleased to be able to present the exhibition and project Suspect Objects Suspect Subjects as a collection of works which question, highlight and respond to the victimising of Muslim communities in the UK and around the world.

View the artworks on our website: https://www.soas.ac.uk/gallery/suspect-objects/