How can art be a witness to war? How can traumatic testimonies be drawn up? Is seeing images from afar also a form of witnessing? These questions will be reflected through the work of Sudanese political cartoonist Khalid Albaih and the Ukrainian filmmaker Tetiana Khodakivska.
Khalid Albaih recently completed the installation Shahid, Arabic for witness, which addresses how social media and live streaming of the atrocities in Gaza have turned viewers into witnesses. Tetiana Khodakivska's mixed-media documentary The Blue Sweater with a Yellow Hole uses hand-drawn animations as testimony of Ukrainian children's time in the Russian “re-education camps”.
The conversation will take place in the room where Pablo Picasso's Guernica was shown in 1938, which is the focus of Dag Erik Elgin's current exhibition BOMBA. Although Picasso painted the work in exile in France, Guernica depicts scenes of the devastating bombing by Nazi planes of the Basque town of the same name just weeks before.
The event is part of a program that is organized in partnership with Fritt Ord for which the exhibitions of Kunstnernes Hus create the framework for current conversations about the intersections of art, society and freedom.
Bidragsytere
Khalid Albaih is a Sudanese independent political cartoonist renowned for his incisive human rights advocacy, shared globally under the name "Khartoon." His powerful cartoons have been exhibited worldwide, and his writings have appeared in major international publications. Albaih was the central figure in The Guardian's short documentary *The Story of Civil Rights is Unfinished* (2016) and has published two influential books: Khartoon! and Sudan Retold, an art book he co-edited, featuring contributions from 31 Sudanese artists documenting Sudan's rich history. His work extends beyond drawing, with installations like Bahar, a poignant video piece using found footage of refugees at sea; The Walls Have Ears (Documenta 15), and Shahid (Mathaf, Qatar, 2024), all exploring themes of displacement and social justice. In 2024, he broadened his influence by hosting Alhasil Shino? on AJ+. As editor-in-chief of KhartoonMag.com, a platform for displaced Sudanese cartoonists, and creator of the award-winning @DohaFashionFridays, which amplifies marginalized voices, Albaih remains a vital force in art activism, championing global social justice and freedom of expression.
Tetiana Khodakivska is an award-winning Ukrainian filmmaker, a member of the European Film Academy, the Ukrainian Film Academy, a Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program Grantee, and a Ukrainian Directors Guild board member.
Tetiana strives to challenge pressing social issues through multi-disciplinary projects. Her body of work includes a cinema vérité documentary about mortality “Enticing, Sugary, Boundless or Song and Dances about Death '' that was premiered at the Ji.hlava Film
Festival and was nominated as best documentary at the Ukrainian Film Academy Awards. Tetiana is particularly interested in examining society from children’s perspectives. Among her other awards, is the Gold Plaque at the Chicago International Film Festival for the period mini-series Angels of War, which follows the stories of siblings during the Second World
War.
Creating links between story-telling, contemporary art and the academic world, In 2022, Khodakivska co-curated the immersive Exhibition of Ukrainian Contemporary Art in the James Gallery at Cuny Graduate Center. The Exhibition brought the presence of 51 artworks by 40 renowned Ukrainian artists to New York audiences through projections, becoming the largest gathering of contemporary Ukrainian art in the United States in the last twenty years.
Main photo: Jan Khür/Abrakadabra
Portraits: Courtesy of the artists.
