An Introductory Curriculum for Reparations
Letters to the past and the future
It's 1985, a year before I was born. In Belgrade, the winter has loosened its grip, though its memory lingers in the bones and in the rationing of coffee, electricity and fuel. For twenty-four consecutive, blistering winter days in December and January, the daily temperature never rose above 0 °C. It was one of the longest freezing streaks in the city's recorded history. Now the cold and the blackouts have subsided and in an office on 6 Lenin Street, warmed by little more than resolve, someone, or several someones, bend over a page, searching for words of solidarity that Yugoslav women might send to the Palestinian women due to gather in Tunis.
It's the same year, and spring lingers over Tunis as April turns to May. The air is mild and the light gentle. Inside the Hotel Amilcar, the Fourth Conference of the General Federation of Palestinian Women is in session. In attendance are “Palestinian sisters” who spent long years in the Zionist occupation's prisons, freed from captivity in late 1983. Some important men sit in the front row. A representative of the Federal Conference for the Issues of the Social Status of Women of Yugoslavia is about to deliver the greetings that travelled down the Adriatic and across the Mediterranean, a message carried by the same waters that touched different shores. She begins;
“Dear comrades,
I am very pleased to have the honour of conveying greetings to you on behalf of the Conference for the Issues of the Social Status of Women of Yugoslavia, and on behalf of all the women of Yugoslavia I thank you for the invitation you extended to the conference, and I hope that the work of your conference will be crowned with success.
[...]
The people of Yugoslavia and the women of Yugoslavia are aware of your just struggle for freedom and for the establishment of a free, independent Palestinian state, and of the difficulties you face in your popular liberation struggle. The contribution of women to your struggle is immense and an integral part of it. Without it, the goal, which is freedom, cannot be achieved.
The women of Yugoslavia, [...], led by the Communist Party of Yugoslavia, entered the field of struggle against fascism and Nazism and their collaborators during the Second World War. These days, and specifically on May 9th, Yugoslavia celebrates the victory over fascism, a victory achieved through the common struggle alongside other progressive peoples and nations, in which all the peoples and nationalities of Yugoslavia actively participated, including women on an equal footing. As we mark this anniversary, we highlight the great contribution women made to the people's liberation struggle and to the development of socialism. Since we ourselves have this experience, we sincerely affirm our support for your just struggle. We too lived through the siege of war and the fight for liberation, and at the same time, together with the other progressive forces in our society, our socio-political system declared the principles of a socialist society, in which men and women participate equally in all areas of decision-making. This is guaranteed by the constitution and laws of our socialist self-managing country.
[...]
We still encounter certain difficulties, and we must keep working for the consistent application of the constitution and the law, until the remnants of patriarchal consciousness and traditions are completely overcome, and until all the rights women gained through their contribution to the people's war, the revolution and the rebuilding of the country after the war are fully and lastingly realised. Women, the working class and all working people today take part in carrying out the tasks of completing the development of the political system of socialist self-management, accelerating material prosperity, completing the economic stabilisation program, strengthening brotherhood and unity among our nations and nationalities, and holding firm in international relations on the basis of the principles and aims of the policy of non-alignment, whose foundations were laid during President Tito's lifetime.
[...]
The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia [...] unequivocally support the struggle of the Palestinian people and insist on Israel's withdrawal, without conditions or restrictions, from all the Arab and Palestinian territories occupied in 1967, and for the realisation of the Palestinian people's inalienable rights to self-determination, independence and sovereignty, and to the establishment of their own state on their own land. [...]
[...]
Dear comrades, I wish once more that your conference's proceedings will be crowned with success, and that you will continue to improve the situation of Palestinian women. I also express our readiness to continue cooperation between the General Federation of Palestinian Women and the Conference for the Issues of the Social Status of Women of Yugoslavia.”
It's October 2026, and the weather in London has turned. The summer was apocalyptic. The heat that pressed down on the city for weeks left the parks faded to a dusty orange I have never seen here before. Now autumn seems to be arriving, and I am relieved by its crispness. My hands are cold.
I sit to read these messages from the past once more. The pages are cream-coloured and slightly skewed in their scans. I am using modern technology to decipher them, feeding the scans into a machine that reads the Arabic lines that I cannot. I am reminded that I really should have committed to learning the language. Maybe it's not too late. I should really do it soon.
I notice that page 3 of the speech appears to be missing. The numbers run 2, then 4, and I wonder whether it’s a typo, a slip of the numbering, or whether a whole page really is gone. Was it lost, misfiled, never scanned or kept? Did it even exist?
I think about the gaps in archives, and about my desire to fill them. I think about time travel and generational disappointments, and I wonder if the women in that hall thought of this too. I scan the photograph of the meeting held at the sidelines of the conference for signs of this. Impossible to know.
Just a few short months following the conference, on 1 October 1985, in an operation they called Wooden Leg, Israeli jets bombed the PLO's headquarters outside Tunis. In Belgrade, the brotherhood and unity named in the speech has a few years left, and the stabilisation programme will give way to inflation, then to war, and the country that sent the greeting will be gone before I am old enough to remember it.
In Celtic Christian tradition, a thin place is where two realms press so closely they almost touch. As I disappear deeper into the letters and speeches, I find myself in the orbit of familiar vocabulary. Time starts to feel like a thin place too. The distance between these pages and today feels more permeable than linear chronology allows. I am caught in the arc of a returning boomerang, suspended in constellations, not timelines.
Today, a free Palestine has yet to arrive. But we promise that it will. We insist that it will.
Prompted by Munira Khayyat, I think about what tense all this belongs in. I think about October. I think about ellipses. You sit in them too. Are the three dots comfortable?
I ask myself if time is a traitor and the archive a trickster. I drift into a daydream about the women at that conference, tasting freedom after years in the occupation's prisons. I think of the letters and poems I have written for almost two years to a friend who is held in one of those prisons today. Letters I cannot send. I think about his freedom as a debt that is owed to the sky.
Outside, the Sunday light is low. The sun slants in through my windows, bringing with it an unnerving sense of calm. I realise that I have already resolved to write in the present. I pour a second cup of coffee, and turn to another letter. I begin;
Dear A,
[...]
Angelina Radaković
London, UK
Introduction
On 25 May 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota (USA) George Floyd, a Black man, repeatedly gasped the words 'I can't breathe' while a white police officer restrained him by pressing his knee to Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Mr Floyd died.
A citizen's video of the encounter became public, and protests erupted across the USA. This triggered an outpouring of rage and grievances, particularly against law enforcement forces, who are collectively perceived as hostile to the communities of colour that they are paid to serve and protect.
This curriculum has been thoughtfully assembled by Shannon Ayers Holden, an American citizen and a member of the Alserkal team, as an online resource for anyone interested in learning more about the complex history of race relations in the USA. Taking the longue duree approach - showing how a struggle that began during the colonial period of slavery is now manifest in the present day – it is organised chronologically in five sections.
This list is intended as a starting point for dialogue on this subject, and is not intended in any way to be a definitive statement.
THE HISTORY: SLAVERY AND EMANCIPATION
1619 - 1865
Reading: Non-fiction
The 1619 Project – The New York Times Magazine
This Pulitzer prize-winning, multi-part and multi-media project traces the trajectory and repercussions of slavery in America, starting in the year 1619.
Slavery and The Making of America – James Oliver Horton and Lois Horton
The history of slavery is often documented without the perspective of the enslaved. This book brings forth the voice of the slaves and anchors it in the centre of this critical period of American.
The Constitution of the United States of America, The Bill of Rights and all Amendments
The 13th amendment to the constitution abolished the institution of slavery; the 14th, 15th, 19th, 24th and 26th amendments to the Constitution ensures citizenship by birth, and upholds the right to vote for all citizens.
President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, as the nation approached its third year of bloody civil war. The proclamation declared ‘that all persons held as slaves’ within the rebellious states ‘are, and henceforward shall be free’.
The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family – Annette Gordon-Reed
The story of the Hemings, and in particular that of Sally Hemings, is one that existed as an open secret: the Black Hemings were related by blood to Thomas Jefferson, the United States’ third president and an author of the Declaration of Independence.
Beloved is a beautifully written story of love, pain and freedom, and is one of my favourite books from one of my favourite authors. Sethe, its protagonist, was born a slave and escaped to freedom but years later she is still not free. She is haunted by the memories of her dead child whose tombstone is engraved with a single word: Beloved.
Crossing the River – Caryl Phillips
Crossing the River is a story about three Black people during different time periods, and in different continents as they struggle with the separation from their native Africa.
The Known World – Edward P Jones
This 2003 historical novel set in Virginia during the antebellum era examines the issues regarding the ownership of Black slaves by both white and Black Americans.
The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead
Two slaves, Cora and Caesar, make a run for freedom from their Georgia plantation. They follow the Underground Railroad which is a secret transport system consisting of trains, safe houses and coded networks. The book is an excellent example of speculative fiction and is a Pulitzer Prize winner.
Listening: Sounds of freedom, struggle, resistance, hope
Slaves used music and song as fellowship and coping mechanisms in response to their involuntary condition of bondage. They also used songs as resistance tools, to send codes and messages to each other.
Oh Freedom; Come and go with me to that land; I’m On My Way – Odetta
Wade in the Water – Fisk Jubilee Singers
Roll, Jordan, Roll – Mahalia Jackson
Listening: Podcasts and Oratory
1619 podcast series – New York Times
This six-part audio series is part of the larger project by the same name from the New York Times.
Roll, Jordan, Roll: A Community in Sound and Song - Thayne Stoddard
Solomon Northup was a free Black man who was kidnapped and illegally sold into slavery. This text deconstructs this song, and Northup’s poignant recognition that his life has forever changed.
The Life of a Song – Wade in the Water - Financial Times
Water is a metaphor for freedom and safety, even in death. This piece describes the ‘river’ as refuge, and decodes some of the hidden messages in this popular song.
Viewing
This film was 20 years in the making and left audiences stunned by the riveting performances and powerful visual narration. It is the story of Mona, a beautiful model living in the 20th century who opens a portal and travels back in time where she finds herself on a slave plantation. She experiences the brutality of slavery first hand and eventually takes control of her destiny.
Based on the 2008 book of the same title, this 90-minute documentary aired in 2012 and lays out the case that slavery existed well into the 20th through the exploitation of convict labour and punitive fiduciary sharecropping contracts.
Slavery and the Making of America
Originally broadcast in 2004, this multi-part documentary series traces the beginnings of slavery in America in 1619 to its legal abolishment with the 13th amendment to the US Constitution.
Lagniappe
A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South - Michael Twitty
Food has a way of bringing people together - even if they are on opposite sides of an issue. The author shares his family’s Southern history and provides insight on culinary traditions passed down by slaves.
Okra is a staple in Southern cooking. This video is a historical reenactment of cooking in an antebellum plantation kitchen.
RECONSTRUCTION AND JIM CROW
1865 - 1965
Jim Crow was a minstrel character who became synonymous with segregationist laws in the South.
Reading: Non-fiction
Barracoon – Zora Neale Hurston
This book tells the true story of one of the last known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last ‘Black Cargo’ ship to arrive in the United States.
The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921 – Tim Madigan
On the morning of 1 June 1921, a white mob obliterated off the face of the earth a Black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma, known as Negro Wall Street. It was one of the most prosperous neighbourhoods in America and its surviving victims and descendants were never compensated for their losses.
W.E.B. DuBois was one of the most influential scholars of the 20th century and was the first Black American to earn a PhD from Harvard. A vocal advocate of civil rights for the newly emancipated, he was also one of the founders of the NAACP. This book presents the contributions of Black Americans in years immediately after the end of the Civil War.
Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution – Eric Foner
The end of slavery brought to an end a way of life that had profound effects on both Black and white populations, as documented in this book.
Reading: Fiction
Their Eyes Were Watching God – Zora Neale Hurston
One of the most important works of 20th century American and feminist literature, Zora Neale Hurston's 1937 classic reveals the story of Janie, a woman who refuses to live a life of dreams deferred.
The Learning Tree – Gordon Parks
This is a coming of age story with integrity, truth, and courage as major themes from the preeminent journalist, photographer, and filmmaker Parks.
To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
A historical novel set in the Great Depression it tells the story, through the eyes of six year old Scout, of a Black man falsely accused of a crime.
Listening: Sounds of freedom, struggle, resistance, hope
Strange Fruit – Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday’s Searing “Strange Fruit” Still Has The Power To Startle
Listening: Podcasts and Oratory
Till Victory Is Won: The Staying Power Of 'Lift Every Voice And Sing'
Known as the Negro National Anthem, most Black Americans know this song from school, church or family reunions. This is the Black community’s ‘Star Spangled Banner’.
Viewing
Two Mississippi families – one Black, one white - confront the brutal realities of racism, farming, and friendship in the post-World War II South.
This is the true story of Massachusetts’ 54th Infantry Regiment, the second all-Black regiment to represent the North in the Civil War.
What Was It Like to Travel While Black During Jim Crow?
The Green Book was widely used by Black Americans as a tool to safely plot their journeys, particularly in the South, and across state lines.
Lagniappe
‘Strange Fruit’ turned Billie Holiday into one of the first victims of the War on Drugs.
High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America – Jessica B. Harris
THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
1954-1968
Reading: Non-fiction
The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Malcolm X is one of my personal heroes and this book is one of my favourites as it chronicles his journey from an early life of crime to one of the most influential figures of the 20th century.
The Fire Next Time - James Baldwin
No one can turn a phrase like James Baldwin and The Fire Next Time is as relevant today as it was in 1963 when it was published, on the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. The book is a clear-eyed throwing down of the gauntlet, and attack on racism and its consequences.
Reading: Fiction
A Raisin in the Sun – Lorraine Hansberry
Set in Chicago’s south side, the story is about a Black family's experiences as they attempt to improve their financial circumstances with an insurance payout, following the death of the father of the family. Hansberry was the first Black woman to have a play on Broadway. The production ran for over 18 months, and set box office records at the time.
The Wedding – Dorothy West
Set on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding provides a glimpse into the close-knit and insular world of the prominent Black bourgeoisie. The Coles family gathers for the wedding of Shelby, who has chosen to marry a white jazz musician much to the shock of the community, particularly since she could have chosen any number of suitors from the 'right' families with the 'right' pedigree.
Listening: Sounds of freedom, struggle, resistance, hope
In direct contrast to the Motown sound that was at its peak during this period, the selections below are examples of protests against ‘the system’, and are burgeoning and explicit vocalisations of Black Power and Black Pride.
A Change is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke
Mississippi goddam – Nina Simone
Young, Gifted and Black – Aretha Franklin
Say It Loud, I’m Black and I’m Proud - James Brown
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised - Gil Scott-Heron
Listening: Podcasts and Oratory
I’ve Been to the Mountain Top - Martin Luther King, Jr
Martin Luther King, Jr was asked at the very last minute to speak to the hundreds of people who had gathered on 3 April, 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, when they heard he was in town in support of the striking sanitation workers. Widely regarded as one of the greatest speeches ever, it would also be his last.
The Ballot or The Bullet - Malcolm X
American Public Radio observers that The Ballot or the Bullet was one of Malcolm X's most recognisable phrases, and the speech was one of his greatest orations. Two thousand people – including some of his opponents - turned out to hear him speak in Detroit. President Lyndon Johnson was running for re-election in 1964, and Malcolm X declared it ‘the year of the ballot or the bullet’.
This debate at Cambridge University in 1965 pitted Buckley, the conservative intellectual, and Baldwin, the writer and civil rights activist, on opposite sides of the dividing line between American progressives and conservatives on questions of race, justice, and history.
Eulogy for Malcolm X - Ossie Davis
Malcolm X’s widow asked Davis to give the eulogy for her murdered husband, a choice that was widely respected by Blacks and whites, conservatives and liberals. The speech beautifully expresses how Malcolm could move a people, and why he was so loved - then and now.
Viewing
Produced and directed by Spike Lee, the film dramatises key events in Malcolm X's life, including his conversion to Islam, his pilgrimage to Mecca, and his assassination.
On Sunday morning, 15 September 1963, sticks of dynamite planted by the KKK under the steps of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama were set off on a time delay, killing four young girls inside. The bombing is marked in American history as a critical and pivotal moment in the Civil Rights Movement and provoked national outrage. It accelerated the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Lagniappe
How James Brown Made Pride a Hit
Malcolm Gladwell Revisionist History: Good Old Boys
Stevie Wonder helped make Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday
BLACK LIVES MATTER
2013 - Present
Reading: Non-fiction
Stevenson is the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, a legal practice dedicated to ending mass incarceration and excessive punishment, and to defending the human right of those most desperate and in need. One of his first cases was that of Walter McMillian, who was sentenced to die for a murder he insisted he didn't commit.
The New Jim Crow – Michelle Alexander
Michelle Alexander argues that ‘we have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it’. By targeting Black men and communities of colour through the War on Drugs with stiff and mandatory prison sentencing, the book lays out how the U.S. criminal justice system has ensured millions of Americans to permanent second-class status. The book is an excellent companion to the documentary 13th.
The Fire This Time - Jesmyn Ward
Positioned as a contemporary response to James Baldwin's The Fire Next Time published in 1963, this book of collected essays, poems and texts considers the Black experience in the United States, 50 years on.
This collection of texts, poems, images and thoughts is an incisive examination of the compounding effects of racism as they play out in daily life and the media.
Reading: Fiction
Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
What does it mean to be Black in America? The novel addresses the universal questions of race and belonging from the perspective of two Nigerians finding their paths in the US and the United Kingdom.
The Hate U Give - Angie Thomas
Starr moves between two worlds with a tenuous balance: the poor neighbourhood where she lives and the fancy suburban prep school she attends. The balance between these worlds is shattered when she witnesses the fatal shooting of her childhood best friend at the hands of a police officer. She must find her voice to do what she knows is right.
Listening: Sounds of freedom, struggle, resistance, hope
Defiance in the face of power is a universal theme that permeates many of the iconic anthems made popular by hip-hop and rap artists, giving birth to a new - and distinctly American - musical genre.
Advisory: some items contain strong or sensitive content
Fight The Power – Public Enemy
Listening: Podcasts and Oratory
This episode tells the story of one farm couple who say the US Department of Agriculture treated them unfairly because of their race.
Tension between African American communities and the police has existed for centuries. This podcast explores the origins of American policing, and how those origins put violent control of Black Americans at the heart of the system.
Viewing
Do The Right Thing – Spike Lee
The film chronicles a sweltering summer day in the life of a Brooklyn neighbourhood, centring in the local pizzeria. Racial tensions are simmering and culminate in violence and death. The film was deemed ‘culturally, historically, and aesthetically significant’ by the Library of Congress in its first year of eligibility in 1999, and was selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.
Fruitvale Station – Ryan Coogler
The true story of Oscar Grant III, a 22-year-old San Francisco Bay Area resident, who crosses paths with friends, enemies, family, and strangers on the last day of 2008.
Iconoclasts - Season 2 Episode 6
Provocative comedian Dave Chappelle and renowned poet Maya Angelou discuss how poetry and comedy can bridge both genders, and generations.
Lagniappe
Birdwatching While Black in Central Park
A white woman falsely reports an incident to the police, accusing a Black man with threatening behaviour.
Star Spangled Banner - Marvin Gaye’s riveting performance of the American National Anthem at the 1983 NBA All-Star Game
REPARATIONS
1865 - Present
Reading: Non-fiction
The Case for Reparations - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Coates eloquently argues that 'until we reckon with our compounding moral debt, America will never be whole'. He makes the case for reparations to rectify the structural, institutional and economic inequities resulting from 400 years of slavery and Jim Crow laws. ‘Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.’
Reading: fiction
The Nickel Boys - Colson Whitehead
Based on the real story of a reform school that operated for 111 years and devastated the lives of thousands of children, The Nickel Boys is about a college-bound young man, whose life is changed forever because the tiniest of mistakes.
Listening: Sounds of freedom, struggle, resistance, hope
Reclaiming Black bodies through artistic and personal agency. Advisory: some items contain strong or sensitive content
This Is America – Childish Gambino
Is It Because I’m Black - Salaam Remi
Listening: Podcasts and Oratory
Into Reparations with Nikole Hannah Jones
From the creator of the 1619 Project, this podcast brings the project full circle by making the argument for the necessity of reparations as a social imperative, and not an option.
Viewing
13th - A documentary by Ava DuVernay
This documentary from director Ava DuVernay examines the disproportionate incarceration rates of Black men in the United States. It is an excellent companion to Michelle Alexander's The New Jim Crow.
When They See Us - Ava DuVernay
Five teens from Harlem become trapped in a nightmare when they're falsely accused of a brutal attack in Central Park. Based on the true story.
41 Shots: The Killing of Amadou Diallou - Trial By Media
In 1999 Amadou Diallo was shot 41 times in the vestibule of his apartment building by New York City police officers. He was unarmed. His death became synonymous with police brutality and racial profiling and was a precursor to many police shootings across the country of unarmed Black men.
Lagniappe
Lavender Freddie: There Are Black People in the Future
BIO
ABOUT SHANNON
Shannon Holden, our Community Relations Manager, comes to Alserkal Avenue with professional experience at arts and cultural institutions as well as corporate business environs. She holds a BA degree from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. In 2011, she managed the first and largest exhibition in the region on contemporary African art titled As It Is! Contemporary Art from Africa and the Diaspora, a four-part exhibition presented by Mojo Gallery featuring the works of 24 African artists. An alumna of Campus Art Dubai’s inaugural cohort, her exhibition on the aesthetic of funk titled Chaos into Clarity: Re-possessing a Funktioning Utopia was presented at Sharjah Art Foundation. By way of New York City, she and her family have lived in Dubai for 12 years.
What We Plant, What We Owe
I grew up in a small village in southern Slovenia, surrounded by forests. My grandmother gathered herbs; my father and grandfather worked in forestry. From our elders, we learned that the forest gives and the forest takes. We also learned to take only what we needed, and to understand that the forest was not ours to possess.
This knowledge has stayed with me. It shapes how I think about our relationship with the living world, and how I approach the history of the Non-Aligned Movement: not only as a political project of decolonisation and independence, but also as an unfinished experiment in imagining how we might live together, across differences, without submitting to the centres of power.
At the founding conference of the Non-Aligned Movement in Belgrade in 1961, political leaders planted plane trees. Similar ceremonies took place at later summits, with trees chosen for their particular meanings and origins. Flowers, too, were carefully arranged for meetings and diplomatic encounters. These gestures might seem ceremonial, even ornamental. Yet a tree is never only a symbol. It takes root in a particular place, draws water from the earth, grows through time, and outlives those who plant it. It reminds us that political futures, like forests, require conditions in which different forms of life can exist together. But still, we must ask. Who plants, and on whose land? Who decides what should grow, what must be cleared, and which forms of life are considered expendable? The planting of trees, like the language of conservation itself, can also carry the legacy of colonial control over land and people. Colonial forestry turned forests into sources of timber and revenue, closing them to those who had lived from them for generations. Many protected areas were created by displacing the very communities who had cared for the land.
Environmental concerns were not at the centre of the Non-Aligned Movement’s early programme. Gradually, however, ecological balance became inseparable from issues of sovereignty, development and global inequality. The point was larger than protecting nature: it was to ask who profited from its destruction, who controlled its resources, and who was expected to pay the price. These questions remain urgent.
From oil extraction and poisoned landscapes to deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems through war, environmental devastation follows the unequal distribution of power. In Gaza today, the destruction of land, water, farms and olive groves, what many describe as ecocide, shows how the erasure of a people and the erasure of their living environment go hand in hand. To uproot an olive grove is to undo the act of planting, and with it a people’s claim to a future on their own land. There is only one Earth, but we do not inhabit it on equal terms.
Perhaps flowers and trees offer a way of thinking about solidarity beyond political declarations. Not as a universal language that erases differences, but as a practice grounded in specific places, histories and responsibilities. A seed carries the possibility of a future, but never guarantees it. What grows depends on the soil, the climate, the hands that tend it, and the forces that threaten its survival.
To return to the Non-Aligned Movement today is not to restore an idealised past. It is to ask what remains of its unfinished promises, and what new forms of solidarity they might make possible. What would it mean to treat the Earth not as property or an inexhaustible resource, but as a shared condition of life?
We are guests here.
Bojana Piškur
Ljubljana, Slovenia
About the Non-Aligned Constellations Working Group
Grounded in the concept of ‘constellations’ and derived from the Southern Constellations exhibition series (launched in 2019 at Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia), this research explores the intersection of art, history, and geography, with a particular focus on the global relationships fostered through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The project investigates the legacy of the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries Josip Broz Tito (Titograd, 1981–1995), whose collection, comprising 800 works from 56 NAM countries, is now housed at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro. Curators Angelina Radaković, Bojana Piškur, and Natalija Vujošević (the initiator of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory project at MSUCG) aim to revive the collection through participatory, experimental, and interdisciplinary methods. By engaging with its historical and political context, they seek to reestablish connections with cultural actors from the Global South. Tracing the exchanges of solidarity, this project will reframe the artworks, offering new perspectives on the cultural and political dialogues that shaped both the past and present.
Bojana Piškur is a senior curator at Moderna galerija in Ljubljana. Her research and curatorial work focus on the Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav context, the Non-Aligned Movement, and the evolving concept of the ‘East(s)’. Since 2019, Piškur has curated and co-curated Southern Constellations exhibitions at institutions such as Moderna galerija (Ljubljana), Asia Culture Center, Gwangju (South Korea), Filodrammatica Gallery (Rijeka, Croatia), Museumof Contemporary Art of Montenegro (Podgorica), the Qattan Foundation (Ramallah, Palestine), National Opera and Ballet (Skopje, North Macedonia), and The Mosaic Rooms (London, UK).
Bodies expanding, bodies contracting
I will tell you exactly where the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries is located in my memory, in my body, and in the body of the building itself.
It was sometime around 1986, and I was a ten-year-old girl. As part of a school activity, we visited the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries “Josip Broz Tito.” The Gallery was housed in the Petrović Palace, in Kruševac Park. We are in the attic, and it is crowded. The air is stuffy, my sweater is itching, I can feel myself sweating, and my feet hurt because of my flat arches. We are having a music lesson, looking at a collection of musical instruments from Indonesia, Burma, and Congo. Our teacher tells us that we belong to the Non-Aligned Movement. She explains that these instruments were gifts to the Gallery from friendly countries. She tells us that, together with these countries, we form a community committed to peaceful coexistence, one that refuses to join military alliances seeking to dominate others through the law of the strongest. She speaks about anti-colonial and anti-imperialist politics, and about how the community of non-aligned countries holds a different vision of the world, one in which relationships are built on mutual support, respect for others, and recognition of differences.
I do not know how much of the political language our teacher used to explain non-alignment I understood at the time. But I clearly remember the feeling that came with realizing that we belonged to something much larger than the country we lived in. My itchy, sweaty body expands from within, and I am filled with a joyful sense of belonging, pride, and responsibility.
Today, this memory feels like an abandoned utopia. But that utopia had its own public infrastructure. The building has shrunk and fallen into neglect. Since the 1990s, three different institutions have occupied it. Behind it, a new and much larger building housing the American Embassy has appeared. For decades, the collection has remained largely out of public view, while the struggle to bring it back into public life continues, with uncertain outcomes.
For years, researchers supported by grants from European, Canadian, and American universities have been visiting the museum to study and write about the non-aligned collection. Their interest often makes an important contribution to the collection’s visibility and understanding. Yet the question remains of how the resources, authority, and outcomes of such research are distributed. Who gets the opportunity to produce knowledge, build an academic career, and determine interpretive frameworks, and who remains the custodian of archival materials and a provider of information? Do the methodologies and principles underpinning these research relationships reflect the very values that are the subject of the research itself? Are these relationships anti-colonial, reciprocal, and grounded in solidarity?
Young people from the local community who visit the museum know almost nothing about this heritage, or about the Non-Aligned Movement. Their political education takes place within the horizon of Euro-Atlantic integration and the market economy, while historical experiences of alternative forms of international relations have almost disappeared from public education. At the same time, cultural heritage is increasingly valued in terms of its tourism and market potential.
In the post-Cold War order, marked by new forms of neocolonial domination, the heritage of non-alignment is becoming increasingly visible within international academia, while remaining difficult to access for the communities from which it emerged. It acquires new value as an object of research, but not necessarily as public knowledge or social practice. Today, narratives surrounding the political imagination of non-alignment circulate predominantly through the channels of Western academia and within the specialized discourse of contemporary art, in publications and at panels where access is restricted by class, economic, and institutional barriers.
These barriers determine whose bodies can expand from within today, and whose contract. They are not merely obstacles to accessing information, but part of a broader asymmetrical distribution of resources, knowledge, and the possibility of imagining the world differently. In postsocialist societies, where decades of privatization have transformed material and collectively held goods, the question arises whether a similar fate threatens heritage, ideas, and political imagination itself.
I wonder how we can learn from the Non-Aligned Movement today without turning its heritage into yet another resource for academic and market valorization. How can we re-establish the principles of solidarity, reciprocity, and collective action as practices, beginning with research exchanges and the production of knowledge themselves? How can we once again create places where bodies can expand from within, where knowledge can generate a sense of belonging, solidarity, and the possibility of imagining the world differently?
And who will have access to those places?
Natalija Vujošević,
Podgorica, Montenegro
About the Non-Aligned Constellations Working Group
Grounded in the concept of ‘constellations’ and derived from the Southern Constellations exhibition series (launched in 2019 at Moderna galerija, Ljubljana, Slovenia), this research explores the intersection of art, history, and geography, with a particular focus on the global relationships fostered through the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). The project investigates the legacy of the Gallery of Art of the Non-Aligned Countries Josip Broz Tito (Titograd, 1981–1995), whose collection, comprising 800 works from 56 NAM countries, is now housed at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Montenegro. Curators Angelina Radaković, Bojana Piškur, and Natalija Vujošević (the initiator of the Art Collection of Non-Aligned Countries Laboratory project at MSUCG) aim to revive the collection through participatory, experimental, and interdisciplinary methods. By engaging with its historical and political context, they seek to reestablish connections with cultural actors from the Global South. Tracing the exchanges of solidarity, this project will reframe the artworks, offering new perspectives on the cultural and political dialogues that shaped both the past and present.
Natalija Vujošević is a curator, researcher and cultural organiser based in Montenegro. Her work is particularly concerned with Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav cultural and political histories and with the relationships between historical material, institutional memory, and contemporary conditions. In 2024, she received the Igor Zabel Grant, awarded in recognition of outstanding achievements by curators, art historians, theorists, writers, and critics working in the field of visual.
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