Join SI and do you read me?! for an evening with Moshtari Hilal to celebrate her book, UGLINESS. Hilal will discuss with Céline Semaan, author of A Woman is a School and co-founder of Slow Factory, how power and beauty join forces to determine who is considered “ugly.”
Hamburg-based artist and writer Moshtari Hilal has written a touching, intimate, and highly political book. Dense body hair, crooked teeth, and big noses: Hilal uses a broad cultural lens to question norms of appearance – ostensibly her own, but in fact everyone’s. She writes about beauty salons in Kabul as a backdrop to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Darwin’s theory of evolution, German antisemitism, Kim Kardashian, and a utopian place in the shadow of her nose. With a profound mix of essay, poetry, her own drawings, and cultural and social histories of the body, Hilal explores notions of repulsion and attraction, taking the reader into the most personal of realms to put self-image to the test. Why are we afraid of ugliness?
Please RSVP to rsvp@nyc.doyoureadme.de.
Moshtari Hilal is a visual artist, writer, and curator based in Hamburg and Berlin. Born in Afghanistan, she pursued Islamic studies and political science in Hamburg, Berlin, and London. She is a co-founder of the collective “Afghan Visual Arts and History” as well as the research project “Curating Through Conflict with Care.”
Céline Semaan is an artist, designer, writer, and educator working at the intersection of design, sociology, and material science. For over two decades, her practice has addressed climate change and social injustice through equity-driven approaches to systemic transformation. She is the co-founder of Slow Factory, where her work focuses on regenerative and reciprocal models for social and environmental change.