Framing Relations: Cultural Entanglements Between Australia and the Arab World Symposium
Join us for a day-long symposium convened by Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Sary Zananiri, titled "Framing Relations: Cultural Entanglements between Australia and the Arab World."
Exploring cultural entanglements across art and literature between Australia and the Arab world, the symposium will run all day, and conclude with a keynote by Chrisoula Lionis, presented as the 2025 Margaret Plant Art History Lecture by Monash University’s Fine Art department with Monash University Museum of Art.
The symposium schedule is as follows:
10.30 am – Coffee and Tea with registration
11.00 am – Welcome to Country
11.15 am – Ways of Framing Cultural Relations
- Suzannah Henty, Hugh Ramsay Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne – “George Washington Lambert in Palestine”
- Sary Zananiri, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Monash University – “Shaping Perceptions? Towards a History of Palestinian Cultural Diplomacy and Australia”
- Bader Rizk, PhD Candidate in Architecture, Monash University – “Blast to Blast: Visualising the Urbicide-Ecocide Nexus in Armed Conflict”
- Azza Zein, interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Narrm/Melbourne – “Mimesis, Subversion and Inter-iconicity: Tracing Contemporary (Arab Diasporic) Practice in Australia”
1.30 pm – Lunch
Catered by Flavours of Syria at Monash University Museum of Art - with registration
3.00 pm – Arab Australian Writing in the Shadow of Gaza - Roundtable
- Jumana Bayeh, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, in conversation with
- Micaela Sahhar, Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University
- Michael Mohamed Ahmed, founding director of Sweatshop Literacy Movement
- Lina Koleilat, Academic Fellow at the Australian National University
5.00 pm – Drinks
6pm Keynote – Margaret Plant Lecture in Art History: Chrisoula Lionis
Praxes of Displacement: Contemporary Art as Method for Cultural Resilience presented by Chrisoula Lionis.
This lecture will discuss the relationship between contemporary arts practice, visual evidence, and legal interventions in contexts of forced displacement. With attention focused on the key sites of Palestine, Greece, and Australia, it will consider the capacity for art to operate both as an instrument of cultural resilience and as a legal tool for forcibly displaced populations.
Chrisoula Lionis is a writer, cultural producer and curator based in Athens. She is co-director of the pedagogical platform Artists for Artists and author of books Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (I.B. Tauris, 2016, 2022), (ed) Comedy in Crises: The Weaponisation of Humour in Contemporary Art (Palgrave, 2023) and the forthcoming Displacement and the Art of Intervention: Contemporary Art and Methods for Cultural Resilience (Routledge, 2026).
Tickets for the Margaret Plant Annual Lecture are available here.
7.30pm Finishes
Presented in partnership with Monash University Museum of Art
Event Details
- Date:
- 8 August 2025 at 11:00 am – 7:30 pm
- Venue:
- Lecture Theatre G1.04, Building G
- Categories:
- Fine Art
Description
Join us for a day-long symposium convened by Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Sary Zananiri, titled "Framing Relations: Cultural Entanglements between Australia and the Arab World."
Exploring cultural entanglements across art and literature between Australia and the Arab world, the symposium will run all day, and conclude with a keynote by Chrisoula Lionis, presented as the 2025 Margaret Plant Art History Lecture by Monash University’s Fine Art department with Monash University Museum of Art.
The symposium schedule is as follows:
10.30 am – Coffee and Tea with registration
11.00 am – Welcome to Country
11.15 am – Ways of Framing Cultural Relations
- Suzannah Henty, Hugh Ramsay Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Melbourne – “George Washington Lambert in Palestine”
- Sary Zananiri, Senior Lecturer in Fine Art, Monash University – “Shaping Perceptions? Towards a History of Palestinian Cultural Diplomacy and Australia”
- Bader Rizk, PhD Candidate in Architecture, Monash University – “Blast to Blast: Visualising the Urbicide-Ecocide Nexus in Armed Conflict”
- Azza Zein, interdisciplinary artist and writer living in Narrm/Melbourne – “Mimesis, Subversion and Inter-iconicity: Tracing Contemporary (Arab Diasporic) Practice in Australia”
1.30 pm – Lunch
Catered by Flavours of Syria at Monash University Museum of Art - with registration
3.00 pm – Arab Australian Writing in the Shadow of Gaza - Roundtable
- Jumana Bayeh, Associate Professor, Faculty of Arts, Macquarie University, in conversation with
- Micaela Sahhar, Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University
- Michael Mohamed Ahmed, founding director of Sweatshop Literacy Movement
- Lina Koleilat, Academic Fellow at the Australian National University
5.00 pm – Drinks
6pm Keynote – Margaret Plant Lecture in Art History: Chrisoula Lionis
Praxes of Displacement: Contemporary Art as Method for Cultural Resilience presented by Chrisoula Lionis.
This lecture will discuss the relationship between contemporary arts practice, visual evidence, and legal interventions in contexts of forced displacement. With attention focused on the key sites of Palestine, Greece, and Australia, it will consider the capacity for art to operate both as an instrument of cultural resilience and as a legal tool for forcibly displaced populations.
Chrisoula Lionis is a writer, cultural producer and curator based in Athens. She is co-director of the pedagogical platform Artists for Artists and author of books Laughter in Occupied Palestine: Comedy and Identity in Art and Film (I.B. Tauris, 2016, 2022), (ed) Comedy in Crises: The Weaponisation of Humour in Contemporary Art (Palgrave, 2023) and the forthcoming Displacement and the Art of Intervention: Contemporary Art and Methods for Cultural Resilience (Routledge, 2026).
Tickets for the Margaret Plant Annual Lecture are available here.
7.30pm Finishes
Presented in partnership with Monash University Museum of Art