Author: DAAR - Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency

The Jencks Foundation at The Cosmic House and the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) announce that DAAR received the 2025 RIBA Charles Jencks Award. DAAR has delivered a lecture at the RIBA headquarters on 30 May, 2025.

At a historical moment marked by colonial destruction and fragmentation, ‘DAAS in Sharjah’ cultivates communities grounded in affect and knowledge. The DAAS Public Programme brings together participants, guests, and the broader community for a week of collective conversations across Sharjah. From art and architecture to curatorial practices, hybrid identities, memory, resistance, and land, each session unfolds as a dialogue shaped by lived experiences and research. Through readings, discussions, and shared meals, the programme explores how sites, whether a camp, a city, a rooftop, or a piece of fabric, become methods of learning, resisting, and reimagining. The week culminates in open exchanges and a reflection on the art of conversation as both method and practice.

27- 28 – 29 OCTOBER

Conversations hosted by Mona El Mousfy, Shaden Almutlaq, Olfa Farhat, Zaynab Kriouech, Ida Bencke, Zarmeene Shah, Nadia Asfour, and Nihal Halimeh

 1 NOVEMBER

Conversations hosted by May Al-Dabbagh, Zoe Butt, Charles Esche, and Shahram Khosravi

2 NOVEMBER

DAAS and the Art of Conversation hosted by DAAR

full program and registration

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐭𝐨 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐭: 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐚𝐭𝐞
𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐯𝐬𝐧ä𝐬, 𝐒𝐭𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐡𝐨𝐥𝐦 𝐀𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐥𝐚𝐠𝐨
𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝟑𝟎-𝟑𝟏
Who has the right to host? Who is permitted to claim space, to bring others together, to hold complexity, grief, joy, and struggle in shared form? Who is allowed to dwell, to belong? And under what conditions?
At a time of escalating violence, genocide, and starvation in Gaza, and amid deepening global asymmetries of care, grief, and dispossession, we return to the concept of hosting as a political practice. Hosting is not merely a cultural or personal gesture of welcoming, but a claim to hold space, to make visible, to claim agency, and to insist on the right to presence and collective reflection. To host is to interrupt erasure, to assert forms of belonging that challenge dominant narratives of exclusion, and to reimagine space as shared, contested, and negotiated.
This two-day public program takes place within the rural landscape of Stavsnäs in the Stockholm Archipelago, but it does not remain there. The rural is approached as a lens—a situated space from which to examine broader structures of exclusion and belonging. In Scandinavia, such landscapes are often framed as spaces of purity and retreat, where leisure and care seem like natural rights. Yet they also expose the social, racial, and economic boundaries that govern access to land, rest, time, and the right to host.
This gathering explores the right to host as a framework for rethinking collective responsibility, cultural infrastructure, and the politics of care. Through conversations, situated reflections, and collective inquiry, we will explore how self-care is shaped by neoliberal and racialized contexts; how infrastructures of commoning might redistribute resources and enable new forms of access; and how hosting can function as a radical political tool, not simply a gesture of generosity. Together, we will reflect on how these concepts are made available—or withheld—across different communities and positionalities.
𝐏𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐦
𝐒𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝟑𝟎 𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭
12:00 – 12:45 Brunch
12:45 – 13:00 Gathering & Opening
13:00 – 14:00 Sandi Hilal — Self-Determination as Collective Practice
14:15 – 15:15 Aziza Harmel & Reyhaneh Mirjahani — The Uninvited Host
15:15 – 16:00 Coffee Break
16:00 – 17:00 Cassie Thornton & Ida Bencke — TBC
17:00 – 18:00 Judith Wielander & Matteo Lucchetti — Visible: Art as Policies for Care (2010—ongoing) — Book Launch & Discussion
18:00 – 20:00 Dinner & Cooking Around the Fire
𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲, 𝟑𝟏 𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭
12:30 – 18:00 Cooking & Conversation Around the Fire
𝐋𝐨𝐜𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Storskogsvägen 19, 139 71 Stavsnäs
Access via bus from Slussen — 5 min walk from the bus stop
No registration is needed and it’s a free event. Food is provided, just bring your drink if you wish for.
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The program is co-curated by DAAR, Hosting Lands (Dea Antonsen, Ida Bencke and Aziza Harmel), and Reyhaneh Mirjahani. It is supported by Nordisk Kulturfond, Bikubenfonden and the research project Oikos – Climate and Care in the 21st century, University of Copenhagen.
The event takes place at The Summer House in Stavsnäs in the Stockholm Archipelago, an initiative by DAAR (Decolonizing Architecture Art Research) whose story begins far from the forested islands of Sweden. It is shaped by years of living and working in Palestine and by a project in the northern Swedish town of Boden, commissioned by the Swedish Public Art Agency, which transformed a room in a refugee housing facility into Al Madhafah—a living room where refugees could reclaim the right to host rather than remain eternal guests. When that space was abruptly taken back by authorities, DAAR responded by transforming a site of leisure and exclusion, a private summer house, into a shared space of radical hospitality. The Summer House is not simply a building but an ongoing practice of commoning the private, reclaiming the act of hosting as a form of self-determination

During the 4th Entity of Decolonization General Assembly in June 2025—held at the former entity of colonization of the Sicilian latifundium in Borgo Rizza, now renamed Ente di Decolonizzazione in Borgo EX, in the Municipality of Carlentini, Sicily—the cultural association “Ente di Decolonizzazione APS –  Associazione di Promozione Sociale” was established.

The Association, emerging during the genocide in Palestine, is a tool to continue promoting and strengthening decolonial and anti-fascist practices, the critical reuse of fascist colonial architectural heritage, and collective learning, rooted in three main areas: pedagogy, art and architecture, and commoning.

Those who take part in the Association—as members, participants, or collaborating institutions—share and uphold the following principles:

• They recognize the need to question the persistence of languages and practices rooted in fascism, colonialism, and racism.

• They acknowledge that every individual is a bearer of knowledge, and therefore predetermined hierarchies must be challenged and transformed.

• They value diversity in all its forms.

• They commit to building alliances with diverse groups that use social conflict as a starting point for articulating an open, generous, and supportive society.

• They understand that common use is based on and measured by commitment. Unlike public or private use, common use is activated by the social, economic, and cultural participation of individuals.

• They propose activities not for profit, explroring forms of commoning.

• They commit to ensuring the sustainability of projects based on principles of self-organization and reciprocity.

• They acknowledge that proposed activities aim to move beyond pre-existing and crystallized communities of knowledge or identity, fostering instead the formation of evolving communities.

• They commit to a continual process of reassessing their practices, with the aim of creating a community that not only challenges the injustices of the present but also reimagines and builds a more just and equitable future.

These shared principles and values guide the Ente di Decolonizzazione Social Promotion Association in welcoming new participants, entities, institutions, and individuals through active engagement.

📧 If you would like to get involved, contribute or learn more about next year’s activities, please write to:
entityofdecolonization@gmail.com

or visit

https://www.instagram.com/entity_of_decolonization/

Borgo EX, Carlentini Munipality (SR), Sicily, June 2025  – Banner made from second hand textiles by Lovisa Giscombe Schmidt and Herman Hjorth Berge

 Ente di decolonizzazione: ceneri. DAAR 2025 – MUCIV-Museo delle Civiltà_Museo delle Opacità #2_veduta dell’allestimento. Foto di Giorgio Benni

On the occasion of the exhibition The Museum of Opacities at the Museum of Civilizations in Rome, DAAR presents a new installation titled Ashes, part of the long-term project Entity of Decolonization, awarded the Golden Lion at the 18th International Architecture Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia (2023).

The Entity of Decolonization emerged as an open-ended process for all those who feel the need to engage with or question the legacy of Europe’s colonial and fascist history. Since 2020, through research, artistic interventions, educational programs, and public discussions at the former Entity of Colonization of the Sicilian Latifundium in Carlentini (Province of Syracuse), the project has involved universities, cultural institutions, and local associations in a process of critical reuse of Borgo Rizza, renamed Borgo EX. Built in 1940 under Fascism to “colonize” the Sicilian countryside—deemed backward and unproductive—Borgo EX raises a central question today: how can we reuse buildings constructed during colonial and fascist regimes without perpetuating the ideologies embedded in their architecture?

Following a series of public gatherings with the local community in Carlentini, in 2021 DAAR created an installation to extend this conversation to other contexts and audiences engaged with reuse of Difficult Heritage and decolonization. Starting from the deconstruction and reassembly of the facade of the Entity building, DAAR developed a structure composed of modular seating units, conceived as a platform for collective discourse. This installation has since been exhibited and activated in multiple cities and institutions—including the Mostra d’Oltremare and Museo Madre in Naples, the Berlin Biennale (2022), La Loge in Brussels, the public square in Albissola Marina, MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations in Rome, and the Venice Biennale (2023)—inviting the public to reconsider the social, political, and cultural implications of difficult heritage and to imagine new possible uses for this Difficult Heritage.

Following this extensive journey—during which the ghosts of Borgo EX became entangled with other colonial and modernist legacies—a replica of the installation was ceremonially burned in Carlentini as part of a cathartic and liberating ritual. The ashes were collected into 18 urns, intended to “fertilize” 18 future projects.

Entity of Decolonization: Ashes – at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Photo: Fabian Kanopka

Entity of Decolonization: Ashes – at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Video still Valentina Manzoni

Entity of Decolonization: Ashes – at Borgo EX, Carlentini (SR) Sicily 2025 – Photo: Fabian Kanopka

In this context, the installation Entity of Decolonization: Ashes is now presented at the MUCIV–Museum of Civilizations as the culminating intervention of DAAR’s Research Fellowship. This new iteration incorporates and reconfigures two display cases from the former Colonial Museum, which had originally been used to exhibit objects expropriated during Italy’s colonial occupations. Transformed by DAAR, these vitrines become a device for storytelling: from a bed of ashes emerges a video documenting the ritual destruction and transformation of the colonial entity into a space for decolonial imagination.

From the ashes also arises a new initiative: the launch, in collaboration with MUCIV, of the Prize for the Critical Reuse of Difficult Heritage. Italy retains an extensive architectural and historical legacy from its colonial period (1882–1960), which remains largely unaddressed. The Prize for the Critical Reuse of Difficult Heritage aims to recognize individuals, collectives, and institutions that have initiated processes of critical engagement and imaginative reuse of this legacy.

The inaugural prize is awarded to the Municipality of Carlentini, in recognition of its support for the reuse of Borgo EX. Since 2020, the municipality has generously made the site available to local and international actors for new and diverse uses. The award celebrates how the Municipality of Carlentini has undertaken a process of transformation that—without erasing the site’s colonial origins—reorients its meaning and use toward new and critical narratives.

With this initiative, DAAR and MUCIV launch a biennial award to honor those who imagine and implement critical and transformative reuses of architecture, public space, and built heritage—in Italy and abroad—so that new, shared possibilities can emerge from the material and symbolic legacies of the past.

Muciv – Museum of Civilizations
Museo delle Opacità #2
Opening: Wednesday 21st May, h 18 – 21

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Entity of Decolonization: Ashes, 2025
DAAR – Alessandro Petti and Sandi Hilal

Images and Photography: Valentina Manzoni
Editing: Federico Allocca
Color: Gabriele Cipolla
Technical Installation design: Herman Hjorth Berge

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. The program will be structured as a combination of online sessions and three in-person gatherings, fall, winter and spring.

APPLY HERE

 

 

DAAS – DECOLONIZING ARCHITECTURE ART STUDIES, in Sharjah is an advanced research educational programme led by DAAR – Sandi Hilal and Alessandro Petti, 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 programme is radically structured around participants’ practices and interests offering a critical space for reflection on questions emerging from practices rooted in context. It serves as a space for convivial collective learning. The programme aims to create fertile ground for cultivating a new field of artistic research in Sharjah by forming a group of practitioner fellows who seek to belong to a community of thinkers open to collective reflection and collaborative thinking. The region, home to many practitioners from the Global South, is rich with unique stories that this program seeks to make space for and intertwine with artistic practices. By merging theory and practice, participants will contribute to building a multitude of narratives that recognize and resonate with one another, embodying the diverse cultural depth of life and work, and connecting stories across different lands, belongings, and experiences. DAAS in Sharjah is a combined effort between Sharjah Architecture Triennial, Sharjah Art Foundation, and the Africa Institute, Global Studies University, Sharjah. Advisory members include Hoor Al Qasimi, Salah M. Hassan, Walter Mignolo, May Al-Dabbagh, Shahram Khosravi, Zoe Butt and Charles Esche.

How to Apply

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the midst of the Gaza genocide, our search for belonging and support led us to Cairo, where we met a group of Palestinians artists and architects that survived the genocide in Gaza. A powerful termed emerged during our initial conversations, the profound concept of “Ezwa.” This term intricately weaves together notions of belonging, resilience, and relationships, offering a comprehensive framework for navigating the complexities of communal support. Ezwa encapsulates the essence of being part of a group wherein mutual support is not merely a response to hardship but an integral aspect of everyday life. Within this framework, individuals find solace and strength in one another, sharing burdens in times of adversity and celebrating together in moments of accomplishment. It transcends the conventional boundaries of family, tribe, or nation, emphasizing instead the power of friendship and trust as the building blocks of a resilient community. The emergence of communities like Ezwa highlights the innate human desire for connection and support, especially during times of crisis. By fostering spaces where individuals can come together, share their experiences, and offer each other unwavering support, Ezwa exemplifies the resilience of the human spirit and the power of community in overcoming adversity.

Moreover, the Ezwa community evolves and transforms itself organically as members invite others through friendship and trust, each bringing their unique experiences and perspectives to strengthen the collective bond. In the face of intellectual isolation, the significance of Ezwa becomes even more pronounced. It serves as a beacon of hope, providing individuals with a sense of belonging and connection that is vital for maintaining self-esteem and pride, even amidst extreme difficulty. Through Ezwa, individuals find affirmation in their shared experiences and solidarity in their collective struggles, reinforcing the belief that they are not alone in their journey.

The tree school in Cairo is supported by the Foundation for Arts Initiatives.

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DAAR, Burning the facade of the former entity of colonization of Sicilian latifundium in Borgo Rizza, Sicily. Photo: Rehaf Batniji

One of our goals at Borgo Rizza is to de-normalize its fascist architecture; to critically reflect on the very fact that this architecture was not demolished. Today, most of it is actually in need of restoration. And it’s almost 100 years old, so technically, it’s about to officially become Italian heritage. The trick that architectural historians have used to evade problematizing this difficult heritage has been to separate its formal aspects from its political, social, and environmental motivations. With our interventions at Borgo Rizza, we’re attempting to reconnect this architecture to the historical moment when it was produced, but also to reintroduce it into the present. At a time in which migrant populations continue to arrive in Sicily from former colonies (Libya, Eritrea, and Ethiopia), it is necessary to ask, who has the right to use this colonial–fascist architecture?

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In support of the student movement for the liberation of Palestine and the reclamation of spaces for critical conversations and actions on university campuses, DAAR will visit the encampment at the Politecnico di Milano for an open discussion on the role of education in the struggle for justice and equality. This event will take place at 10:00 AM at the Leonardo Campus.

As part of Milano Arch Week 2024, DAAR will present a lecture on “Decolonizing Architecture” at the Milano Triennale at 6:00 PM.

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