!! This Workshop is for 16 - 25 year olds. Participants under 16 are welcome to attend if accompanied by a parent or legal guardian !!
What else can a library hold besides books? Join artist Tasnim Mahdy to help imagine and build a shared library using recycled cardboard! We’ll take ideas from short readings, including some banned and challenged books, and think about the knowledge we carry in our bodies, from our ancestors, and within our communities. We’ll also consider what happens when stories are silenced. By building, collaging, and playing with colour and texture, we’ll find new ways to experience what we read and feel. Maybe you’ll create a sensory corner, turn words into sculptures, make a book that opens into another world, or design a shelf for something you want to share. Together, our creations will form a growing cardboard library that asks what knowledge we want to bring into the future. No art experience is needed.
Photography: Beth King
Grounded in hydrofeminism, hauntology and emergent strategy, Tasnim’s practice moves fluidly between cyanotype printing, large-scale murals, drawing and site-responsive installation. Across these media she excavates intertwining themes of memory, ecology, mythology and archival erasure – especially as they relate to migration, loss and the politics of place. Cyanotype – with its alchemical interplay of sunlight, salt water and iron – sits at the core of her methodology. Tasnim employs the process both scientifically and poetically to surface submerged narratives and build living, collaborative archives. Also a licensed open-water diver, Tasnim’s affinity with the blue humanities infuses her palette and politics— underwater currents, coral architectures and shifting seabed light thread through her murals and storyboards. Collaboration and care structure every project. Working bilingually in English and Arabic, she facilitates trauma-informed, participatory workshops with refugee and migrant communities, survivors and those excluded from traditional art institutions.