In Conversation: Resisting Racism in Global Arts and Culture with Dr. Mohan Ambikaipaker and Pooja Nansi

Moderated by Huzir Sulaiman and Nicole Wong (Checkpoint Theatre)

Saturday 13 June at 8pm (SG time) on Checkpoint Theatre’s Facebook Live

What links US race relations with the struggle of marginalised peoples in other countries? How are Asians and Asia complicit in antiblackness? Is racism in Asia solely a legacy of colonialism, or are there other forces at play? What does allyship mean in the context of arts and culture?

In this vigorous discussion on the responsibility of artists in engaging with global and local understandings of race and ethnicity, Dr. Mohan Ambikaipaker and Pooja Nansi unpack these questions with moderators Huzir Sulaiman and Nicole Wong.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Mohan Ambikaipaker is a Malaysian who is Associate Professor of critical race theory and postcolonial studies in the Department of Communication, Tulane University, New Orleans, USA. He is the author of Political Blackness in Multiracial Britain (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), an ethnographic study of the experiences of racialized minorities facing racism and police violence in the West. His research and teaching also engages comparative approaches in the study of race across multiple national contexts. He frequently makes international media appearances and was recently featured as a speaker in the Emmy-nominated PBS show, Blackademics and in Astro Awani’s current affairs program Consider This.

Pooja Nansi is the current festival director of the Singapore Writers Festival, and is also the co-founder of Other Tongues, a literary festival of minority voices. She is the author of two collections of poetry. Her key performance work includes her one-woman show, You Are Here (2016) which explores issues of migration through personal family histories. She also co-wrote and performed Thick Beats for Good Girls (Checkpoint Theatre, 2018) which explores the intersections between feminism, identity and Hip Hop. She was a recipient of the Young Artist Award in 2016.