Drop-in zine workshop with Hamja Ahsan

28. 9. 2019

DobraVaga Gallery

Drop-in Zine Workshop with Hamja Ahsan, 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts, 2019, accompanying event at DobraVaga Gallery.

Photo: Nejc Ketiš. MGLC Archive.

Hamja Ahsan – the recipient of the Grand Prize of the 33rd Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts – is an artist, activist and curator, who lives and works in London. He is the author of Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert and the founder of the DIY Cultures festival of creative activism, fanzines and independent publishing. He presented himself at the Biennial with a referendum and invited visitors to the venues of the Ljubljana Biennial to vote for these zones to join the seceded Aspergistan Federation.

During his stay in Ljubljana, he conducted a drop-in (fan)zine workshop with visitors aged 18 and over, reflecting on the message of the Biennial exhibition and offering an insight into the artist’s way of thinking and working. Together they discovered, as Hamja Ahsan claims, “how zine and DIY Cultures help us reinvent the worlds, create insurgent communities, rethink power without taking power, help us survive, create tools of conviviality, and rediscover the power of the daydream and the doodle”.