A Traveling Exhibition of Anticolonial Journals
Nov 7-11, 2024 Brunei Gallery, Lecture Theatre Foyer, Lower Ground Floor, Historical Materialism Conference, SOAS, London

A Traveling Exhibition of Anticolonial Journals is an exhibition featuring reproductions of the covers of leftist anti-colonial and anti-imperial periodicals from the twentieth century. The exhibition forms part of a larger research and teaching project by Revolutionary Papers, a transnational and transdisciplinary collaborative research project whose aim is to resurrect the periodicals in the present by emphasizing the strength of the pedagogical properties of the journals, as well as their potential to complicate the historicity of Western ideas of linear time-space.

This exhibition was first created and curated by cultural scholar and Assistant Curator at Zeitz MoCAA, Dr. Phokeng Setai, at Community House in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2022. They entitled it Quiet Dog, Bite Hard, a reference to a monologue by legendary Afrobeats musician and anti-imperial political firebrand Fela Kuti, which opens the song of the same name by artist Yasiin Bey (formerly Mos Def) emphasising that conditions of intense subjugation do not necessarily repress the oppressed; instead, they often make them fight back harder.

“One thing I want to assure them

If they think I’m gonna change or compromise

My attitude and my way of life or

In my expression or in my goal

Towards politics

They are making me stronger

And I am much stronger now…”


Click here for:
Setai Curatorial Statement and 2022 Exhibition Photos

This second installation at Historical Materialism 2024 is curated by artist, curator and producer, Seda Ergul, cofounder of Queer Art Projects and a founding member of the Istanbul Queer Art Collective.

For more information contact revolutionarypapers@gmail.com