This statement was written after an invitation to the academic community from many Palestinian artist and intellectuals, including the Birzeit University and following the statement of Ghent University
+++ Announcement +++
In June, we return to Borgo Ex for our 5th annual gathering of the Entity of Decolonization!
Stay tuned for more details, open calls and the public program in the coming weeks. 🔥
See you soon!
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+++ Annuncio +++
A giugno torniamo a Borgo Ex per il nostro quinto incontro annuale dell’Ente di Decolonizzazione!
Rimanete sintonizzati per ulteriori dettagli, open call e il programma pubblico nelle prossime settimane. 🔥
A presto!
Pictures: Fabian Konopka
سعدنا باستقبال أعضاء برنامج «دراسات نزع الاستعمار عن العمارة والفن» (DAAS) في أرض.
يُعد برنامج DAAS، الذي أطلقه جمعية دار للتخطيط المعماري والفني (DAAR) - ساندي هلال وأليساندرو بيتي بالتعاون مع ترينالي الشارقة للعمارة (SAT)، برنامجاً تعليمياً وبحثياً متقدماً للفنانين، والمعماريين، والقِيّمين الفنيين، والممارسين الثقافيين المهتمين بفهم ووضع أعمالهم ضمن سياق اللااستعمارية. يتمحور البرنامج بشكل جذري حول ممارسات المشاركين، مُوَفِّرًا مساحة نقدية وودية للتعلم الجماعي والتأمل في القضايا المرتبطة بالواقع والسياق.
We were delighted to welcome the members of DAAS – Decolonizing Architecture Art Studies program at ARD.
The DAAS program, initiated by DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, in collaboration with the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT), is an advanced research and educational program open to artists, architects, curators, and cultural practitioners interested in situating and understanding their work within a broader decolonial context. The program is radically structured around participants’ own practices, offering a critical and convivial space for collective learning and reflection on questions rooted in context. @decolonizing.ps @sharjaharchitecture
Fifth Day
Visual artist Kegham Djeghalian invited us to join The Family Photo Salon, where we shared images and began with the photographs of Kegham Djeghalian Sr. (Գեղամ Ճեղալեան / كيغام جغليان), who established Photo Kegham in Gaza in 1944.
Fourth Day
We had a collective reading at VeryNile and explored their recycling facilities on جزيرة القرصاية (Ǧazīrat al-Qurṣāya). In the evening, Razan Zoubi Zeidani, co-founder of Aldar, gave a lecture on preserving the architecture of Nazareth city.
Third Day in Cairo
We walked through Al-Khalifa in Old Cairo with researcher and architect-artist Ayham Dalal, talked to May al-Ibrashy from Megawra and the Megawra–Built Environment Collective, and visited the sewing and embroidery workshops. In the evening, the day concluded with a lecture led by Hala Alnaji.
#DAASinSharjah You’re invited to join the introductory in-person collective session for DAAS in Sharjah–Cairo with DAAR on January 16 at 3pm (Egypt time) at ARD Art Institution in Cairo. During this collective session, Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti will outline the programme’s scope and structure, providing an opportunity for interested participants to ask questions and receive further clarification.
📍ARD Art Institution, Cairo, Egypt
📅 January 16, 2026
🕒 3:00pm
Another collective session will be offered online via zoom on January 20 for participants unable to join the first one. Following the collective sessions, optional individual online meetings will be available upon request.
DAAS — Decolonizing Architecture Art Studies — in Sharjah–Cairo is an advanced research and educational programme initiated by DAAR; Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti in collaboration with the Sharjah Architecture Triennial (SAT). It is open to artists, architects, curators, and cultural producers interested in situating and understanding their practice within a broader theoretical, historical, political, and social context.
The DAAS Advisory Board is constituted by Hoor Al Qasimi, Salah M. Hassan, Walter Mignolo, May Al-Dabbagh, Shahram Khosravi, Zoe Butt, and Charles Esche.
🔗 FOR MORE DETAILS ABOUT THE PROGRAMME AND HOW TO APPLY, VISIT THE LINK IN OUR BIO.
#opencall #cairo #egypt #sharjah #ARDInstitution
In the past weeks, Borgo EX has been once again inhabited by @daas.community and friends for another fall research week!
Together with our friends from Carlentini, we read, reflected and discussed about encampments - both as spaces of dominance and occupation as well as powerful sites of protest, resilience, commoning practices and critical pedagogies.
Re-appropriating once more a space that has never meant to be inhabited but created for the assertion of fascist propaganda, the domination and colonization of the surrounding landscape, reflected and grounded our discussions way beyond our conversations.
Reflecting on this inherent relationship of the Borgo and its spatial and social context, we also took the time to explore the surroundings, hiking in Pantalica, staying at the beach as well as meeting our friends and comrades all around.
Stay posted for next year's activities in Borgo EX ❤️🔥
Pictures 1-7: Fabian Konopka
Pictures 8-10: Tatiana Pinto
Pictures 11-15: DAAS
Pictures 16-17: Fabian Konopka
Welcome to the 2025 Entity of Decolonization Annual Gathering “home is the mother of return”. If you are returning, welcome back. This year, the curatorial team invites participants to reflect on home as both a place and a practice – on the act of homing, returning, escaping, indulging, and belonging – coming back to Borgo Ex is not just a physical return but a continuation of collective memory, care, and transformation.
The violence against the Palestinian people continues to reach unprecedented scales, while fundamental freedoms in the West are under escalating attack and repression. As we continuously witness colonizers transforming spaces of home into spaces of violence and the expropriation of indigenous land, we pose the annual gathering as a platform to engage with these matters outside of repressive spaces.
We’ve spent the last two weeks at Borgo Ex in Carlentini, Sicilia. Our time has been filled with discussions around the formation of an association for the «Ente Di Decolonizzazione», preparations for the annual gathering in june, birthday celebrations, cooking together, exploring the surrounding landscape and meeting with lots of people.
During a genocide, with fascist violence happening everywhere from Örebro to the US, Entity of Decolonization is a place we come together to live. Here we can express ourselves without facing repression, we can ask questions without being silenced and we can be in solidarity with Palestinians without facing violence.
At Entity of Decolonization we are literally living in the ruins of colonialism and fascism and from these ruins we are trying to create new life together.
photos by @hermanhjorth
DAAS research weeks 2025 were supported by Culture Moves Europe
Decolonizing Architecture: Encampments
The application period for this postmaster course opens on 4th of March 2025 and closes on the 8th of April
In the past year, student encampments have re-emerged as powerful sites of protest against Israel's regime of colonization, occupation, and apartheid in Palestine, as well as the complicit silence of Western universities and governments that provide support for Israel’s war crimes and genocide in Gaza. Moreover, student encampments have been an extraordinary laboratory for commoning practices and student-led critical pedagogies. This course will provide a space to critically reflect on the historical events of the past year, examining their impact on higher education, academic freedom, and critical thinking.
However, more than an archival study of encampments, we will strategically shift our focus and attention to the decades-long ongoing struggles in Palestinian refugee camps. Palestinian camps have been spaces of resistance against Israel’s negation of the ongoing Palestinian Nakba. Emerging at the end of the 1940s as humanitarian spaces, over the following decades they became sites of political urbanity in exile, where new social and political structures were created outside the state system. Despite their differences, refugee camps and student encampments are temporary spaces where the world is reassembled in new configurations. Although both emerge from moments of crisis and are often dominated by an expiration date, they reveal the power of people coming together in the struggle for justice and equality.
The course welcomes participants eager to critically and collaboratively explore the spatial, social, and political dimensions of various forms of encampments.
Follow the link in bio to read more on the application website
All photos by @hermanhjorth
1 — DAAS Living Room for Palestine, December 2023
2 — DAAS Living Room for Palestine, November 2023
3-6 — Encampment Stockholm University, May 2024
7-9 — Encampment Riksdagen, June 2024
10 — DAAS Living Room for Solidarity (Encampment Norberg), July 2024
