The online arts publication Hyperallergic recently featured CHRA core team members Tania El Khoury and Ziad Abu-Rish. In conversation with Katie Kheriji-Watts, they discuss their relocation from Beirut to Bard College and how their previous art and research projects inform CHRA’s overall vision, including its flagship MA in Human Rights and the Arts Program.
The interview highlights the duo’s shared commitment to fostering interdisciplinary work that challenges power dynamics through research and new political narratives. Describing the potency of addressing human rights through the arts, Abu-Rish recalls watching El Khoury’s performances Jarideh. “I saw how audience members were embodying issues that I might be able to write about or lecture on, but it was through the artistic encounter that they were able to get a visceral understanding of some of these dynamics,” he explains. “That, I thought, was much more powerful than what a text or lecture could deliver.”
Read the full interview with Katie Kheriji-Watts here.