Faheem Majeed will moderate a discussion on the Surviving the Long Wars book with co-editor Aaron Hughes and contributing artists Dorothy Burge, Brittney Chantele, and Eric Perez.
Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024) offers a groundbreaking exploration into the complex histories of US warfare and militarism, illuminating the pivotal role of art in cultivating justice, healing, and abolition. Inspired by Indigenous responses to the “American Indian Wars” and artists from the Greater Middle East and South Asia challenging the “Global War on Terror,” this volume examines the intersections between these legacies of creative rebellion and the experiences of contemporary Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) veterans. Informed by the emerging Veteran Art Movement and its ties to global struggles for demilitarization and abolition, the book advocates for solidarity and imaginative resistance against war and empire.
Order your copy of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the End of Empire at BRIDGE Books
MC
Faheem Majeed is an artist, educator, curator, and community facilitator. He blends his unique experience as a non-profit administrator, curator, and artist to create works that focus on institutional critique and exhibitions that leverage collaboration to engage his immediate, and the broader community, in meaningful dialogue. Majeed received his undergraduate degree from Howard University and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC).
SPEAKERS
Dorothy Burge is a multimedia artist and community activist inspired by history and current issues of social justice. Dorothy is a from Chicago, and a descendent from a long line of quilters from Mississippi who created beautiful quilts from recycled clothing. Her realization that the history and culture of her people were being passed through generations of quilters inspired her to use the medium as a tool to teach history, raise cultural awareness, and inspire action. Dorothy received her Master of Arts in Urban Planning and Policy and her Bachelor of Arts in Art Design from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a member of Blacks Against Police Torture and Chicago Torture Justice Memorials, cultural collectives seeking justice for police torture survivors.
Brittney Chantele is a Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and U.S. Army veteran whose work critiques the military-industrial complex while centering healing, Queerness, and community. They performed at Surviving the Long Wars, bringing personal narrative and political critique into conversation through sound. Brittney’s practice spans music, film, painting, ceramics, poetry, and performance, and they are currently pursuing their MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their work often draws on lived experience with disability, biracial identity, and veteranhood to interrogate structures of power and imagine more liberatory futures.
Eric Perez is an artist and educator in the city of Chicago. Primarily a photographer, his work focuses on his experience of being a Marine during his two deployments as part of the Global War on Terror. As Project Manager for Floating Museum, he deploys his skills in photography and videography to document Floating Museum’s projects. He also leads a team in the deployment of two inflatable monuments throughout the city of Chicago. Perez earned his Associates in Art at Triton College in 2016 and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a Bachelors in Fine Art in 2019. Upon graduating, he was selected to take part in Chicago Artist Coalition's Launch Residency (2019). He was selected to be a National Endowment for the Humanities Veteran Fellow (2022) with the emerging Veterans Art Movement. In 2023, he was awarded the annual David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation award and residency at the Hyde Park Art Center. Perez's work has been shown in UIC's 2019 BFA thesis show, Triton College Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery400, and the Hyde Park Art Center.
Aaron Hughes is an artist, curator, organizer, and anti-war veteran. He is a co-editor of Surviving the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion at the Ends of Empire (Bridge Books, 2024) and co-founder of the emerging Veteran Art Movement and Veteran Art Triennial and Summit. Working through an interdisciplinary practice rooted in drawing and printmaking, Hughes works collaboratively to create meaning out of personal and collective trauma, transform systems of oppression, and seek liberation. He develops projects that utilize popular research strategies, experiment with forms of direct democracy, and operate in solidarity with the people most impacted by structural violence. Hughes works with a range of art and activist groups, including Justseeds Artists' Cooperative, About Face: Veterans Against the War, emerging Veteran Art Movement, and Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project.
PROGRAM PARTNERS
About Face: Veterans Against the War (Chicago)
emerging Veteran Art Movement
DEMIL Art Fund
Walls Turned Sideways
BRIDGE
Generously supported by a Creative Forces Grant