October, 2023
We condemn 75 years of land theft, genocide, white supremacy and settler colonialism by the state of Israel, the United States and their Western allies.
We call for the full sovereignty of PALESTINE, in the same breath with which we call for decolonization of ALL stolen lands: in other words, Reparations and Right of Return to all forests, deserts, mountains, gentrified neighorhoods, disappeared cultures; in the same breath we call for a moratorium on “development”; extraction and pollution of water and mineral life: in the same breath we call for a return of planet earth to the indigenous peoples who lovingly care for it, and to the interspecies habitats on every continent harmed by 500 years of colonialism.
RANIA LEE KHALIL
علم البيئة العالم الثالث
The
Third World
Ecology Trilogy
and other works
there is a parallel dimension, just one millimeter away from this one, where all of the tragedies on earth never happened. an earth so much like our own that it has our same creatures. magnificent fish that rainbow the oceans, huge whales that sing sonar to babies, and nurse their young, floating at sea.
PALESTINIAN WILDLIFE SERIES
expanded cinema performance
arabic & english subtitles
2016
Palestinian Wildlife Series appropriates footage from a nature documentary on African Wildlife - shot from a television set in Palestine - to reflect on parallel issues of displacement and extinction among human and non-human beings.
It is part one of the Third World Ecology Trilogy, which meditates on devastation from colonialism across animal, plant and human life.
Palestinian Wildlife Series was created with the support of the Kone Foundation and Al Ma’mal Foundation for Contemporary Art.
THE PAN AFRICAN ASIAN WOMEN’S ORGANIZATION
CAIRO TO CONAKRY, 1960 - 1965
slide projection + video
2019
Combining family archives with ecological records,
The Pan-African Asian Women’s Organization,
Cairo - Conakry 1960 - 1965 reflects on a women’s rights
organization, co-founded by my maternal
grandmother Aida Hamdi.
The Gamaya’at el Ma’ra, had headquarters in Egypt and Guinea
(two of the first African nations to achieve independence
from colonial rule, and the two countries’ of its co- founders)
at a time of widespread movements
for independence in Africa and Asia.
In this moving image, part of a scene entitled “Families of
Assassinated Leaders”, we see a sampling of the minerals and
animal life extracted by Belgians in the Congo between
1898 and 1961 (including Uranium sold to the U.S.’s
Manhattan project, to make the world’s first atomic bomb).
This project was created with the support of the CIMO
and Kone Foundations, Finland.
SINAI (a story i tell my daughter)
single channel video
2019- 2020
Combining sensual movements of water and sea plants in the Egyptian Sinai,
this short essay film reflects on a twin dimention of earth
where the tragedies to our planet and its indigenous beings never happened.
This project was created with the support of the Kone Foundation.
This is a meeting of the Pan African Asian Women’s Organization,
Egyptian delegation, Cairo 1961.
The group is honoring Algerian revolutionaries
Djamilla Bouhired and Zohra Drif
(seated, first and second from the right, with flowers).
Bourhired and Drif would be welcomed by Egyptian
president Gamal Abdel Nasser later that evening
( image lower right corner).
My grandmother, Aida Hamdi, stands behind Drif
and Bouhired, smiling, in a black
dress.