“My background in a geographical context where everyday decisions are shaped by intertwined economic, ideological, cultural, and political systems — and the privilege of being surrounded and in conversation by few activists and alternative thinkers — has made questions of agency, responsibility, and ethics an inevitable part of my daily and artistic life. Today, these questions are becoming even more complicated as notions of agonism and antagonism are challenged anew and called into doubt. How far can we still account for agonistic pluralism? How far can we consider an opponent a legitimate adversary in the current context of genocide and the global rise of radical, exclusionary ideologies? What do we need to understand differently about ethics and antagonism? I explore these tensions through embodied and lived experience, where artistic research becomes a means of sensing, questioning, and unlearning. Collaborating with Hosting Lands, I had the opportunity to engage with these questions through two distinct yet interlinked gatherings: Holding the Dilemma, Sitting with the Question at ANA, and Summer House project with Sandi Hilal (DAAR) exploring the notion of the commons in the Scandinavian rural context as a site for collective imagination, solidarity, and exchange.”

Reyhaneh Mirjahani is an artist working at the intersection of visual art, curating, artistic research, organizing, and publishing, focusing on participatory art. She uses collaborative, interdisciplinary approaches to create dialogic spaces exploring agency, participation, counter-narratives, and spatial politics. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from HDK-Valand, Gothenburg University, and has completed the postmaster programs Commissioning and Curating Contemporary Public Art at HDK-Valand and CuratorLab at Konstfack.