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Gabriel Hoosain Khan

@khangabriel

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Co-founder of the @creativechangelaboratory 🌈🌴🌳🐡🪷🪧🧜🏿‍♂️🦋✊🏾🖤

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A stroll through London ended here. taken in Cock Lane by @khangabriel

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a month ago

A composite from a workshop in Kananga

I was in the DRC 8 years ago on a "gender and protection mission" as they called it, for the UN WFP. I worked as a regional gender adviser at the time. It was my first time in close proximity to conflict, getting a real look at how the humanitarian machinery actually operates on the ground.

And I tried to bring along the creative methods I love. All I could bring with me was a handful of colourful markers and pastel colours, and use the standard flipchart paper available on the other end. We brainstormed programmes, including using drama to respond to sgbv. Looking back at my notes mapping out "gender inequalities experienced by beneficiaries" (gotta love that sterile UN vocab).

Those were difficult times. Intensely queer and transphobic and cis hetero patriarchal, work and geopolitical contexts. Lots of difficult negotiating the office and the daily microaggressions. And then introducing work and negotiating contexts where sgbv was used as a weapon in the war.

I remember the UNHAS flights. The isolating "guest house" stays inside those humanitarian bubbles. And the unexpectedness of bringing creative methods into bureaucratic, militarised conflict spaces.

Where are the spaces that would welcome these creative methods? Where can I do liberatory healing work? by @khangabriel

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2 months ago

Some photos I took while thinking about epidermalization, double consciousness and Black consciousness, following the death of a young South Asian man in my neighbourhood. I was thinking about what it means to be read as a fat Brown bearded man, and why and how I display my queerness, and the moments when my queerness means proximity to whiteness. All of which is unfolding in my PhD writing at the moment. I was also thinking about PhD friends who were reflecting on how we tend to overthink in our journeys. But that's where my brain is right now! 🧠 😕 🤓 🪿🫥🤐🤠✍🏽🪼🍉👾📟🩻 Also thinking about QTBIPOC folks in Berlin, Venezuela withdrawing from the ICC, that the ANC in South Africa is a mess and entirely complicit in xenophobia, and that I need a full body massage! taken in Lost in Space by @khangabriel

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2 months ago

Brighton beach day. 🌊🐳🩳🏝️🌸 Photo by Kamal Badhey. taken in Brighton and Hove by @khangabriel

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3 months ago

In both my personal healing journey, and my art for healing and resistance work, I’ve been confronted (and confronting) the ways psychology is intertwined with systems of colonial oppression.

I contributed to a roundtable discussion titled "Decolonising the Academy: Insights from the Arts and Beyond”. The discussion was convened on the 15th of April by the Centre for Art and Wellbeing (CAW), at the University of Brighton. I was fortunate to present alongside Helen Johnson (my supervisor and co-director of the CAW), Heba Youssef (Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics) and Nara Maria Forte-Diogo Rocha (Universidade Federal Do Ceara, Brazil).

I offer this zine to the discussion, as a deliberate interruption. The zine is loosely informed by principles that underpin my PhD project (although without presenting any PhD data). And it uses a creative format to challenge academic hierarchies and describes a psychology grounded in lived experience, as anti-oppressive, and as collective care.

As part of my input, I talked about how decolonizing academia (and psychology) needs to confront the materiality, and embodiment down to our bones. I was referring to the recent restitution and reburial of the ancestral remains and cultural artefacts associated with 63 indigenous South Africans from European museums (including 6 persons from the University of Glasgow). I said this to appreciate that confronting the rhetorical practices of colonialism and epistemic violence (and epistemicide) is important, but so is confronting ontological violence! And all these big words mean is that we live in a time when our fight is still for the return of our ancestors bones and our dignity!

The zine is very much inspired by the work of Floretta Boonzaier, Peace Kiguwa, Kopano Ratele, Shose Kessi and Micha Frazer-Carroll, among so many others.

Drawing on the work of these scholar-activist among others on the African continent and Global South, I suggest 14 decolonial principles that connect with queer, trans, anti‑racist, anti‑capitalist and disability justice perspectives.

The ideas are offered as a starting point rather than a conclusion, so see the zine as an invitation. taken in Brighton and Hove by @khangabriel

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6 months ago

I miss warm weather and sunshine. 😭 by @khangabriel

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8 months ago

I so desperately want to go back! 🐠 taken in Tayrona Natural Park by @khangabriel

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8 months ago

I know I'm saturating your timelines with tales of bellies and sunshine, but I'm mostly doing this to keep me from falling into damp, January darkness in the UK. Sunshine 🌞 find and liberate me! taken in Minca - Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta by @khangabriel

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9 months ago

🐡🧔🏽‍♂️🐻🫄🏽blowfish blues 💙 🌊💠🐳 taken in Playa Del Medio, Tayrona by @khangabriel

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9 months ago

That floating feeling 🌊🐡 taken in Cartagena De Indias, Colombia by @khangabriel

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9 months ago

I want to remember the 32°C heat. The sun already burning my skin in the early morning. My skin slippery with humidity. The sound of the sea along with the traffic, family chattering inside, the music from the bar/restaurant close by, and the young men shouting the prices and types of coconut sweets they're selling. The smell of cheesy arepas on the grill, fresh lemonade and salty air. Or the feeling of swinging slowly-weightlessly as a breeze. The memory of a calm Cartagena morning. I asked @fmenesesn to take the picture so that I'd remember these feelings. taken in Cartagena De Indias, Colombia by @khangabriel

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9 months ago

Non-binary uncle taking photo on holiday. #auntyenergy #tiasagainstimperialism taken in Ciudad Amurallada, Centro Histórico De Cartagena De Indias by @khangabriel

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9 months ago