Language in the Time of War

An evening starting from the literary work of Solmaz Sharif, who in her poems tries to make visible and rewrite the weaponization of language.

Artist Basma al-Sharif and writers Johannes Anyuru and Athena Farrokhzad meet in conversation on the experienced or inscribed limits of language in critical times and reflect on their relation to Sharif’s texts.

Sharif’s first poetry collection, LOOK, (published in Swedish by Rámus förlag, 2017, in the translation of Ida Börjel & Jennifer Hayashida) repurposed the lexicon of the Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms of U.S. Department of Defense. The title of the 13th edition of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, a hand that is all our hands combined, is loaned from the poem Personal Effects part of this collection.

The programme is organised by Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art and Stadsbiblioteket Göteborg.

Basma al-Sharif (b. 1983, lives and works in Berlin) is a Palestinian artist/filmmaker who explores cyclical political histories and conflicts. Al-Sharif confronts the legacy of colonialism through satirical, immersive, and lyrical works, in films and installations that move backwards and forwards in history, between place and non-place. Al-Sharif’s work has been shown at Hannah Ryggen triennial, Trondheim; Pompidou Metz; De Appel, Amsterdam; the Art Institute of Chicago; MOMA, New York; CCA Glasgow; SALT Galata, Istanbul; the 78th Whitney Biennial, New York; New Museum, New York; Berlin Documentary Forum; Manifesta 8, Murcia / Cartagena, among others. Al-Sharif’s video works have also been widely screened in international film festivals. In 2025 Basma al-Sharif filmed a new work at The Gothenburg Museum of Art, where you can experience it as part of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art.

Johannes Anyuru is a poet, author, and playwright. He made his debut in 2003 with the poetry collection Det är bara gudarna som är nya. That same year, he received the Guldprinsen award and toured with DJ Khim in the Riksteater production Abstrakt rap. His poetry collection Städerna inuti Hall was nominated for the August Prize in 2009. The following year, he made his debut as a novelist with the acclaimed Skulle jag dö under andra himlar. Anyuru made his international breakthrough with En storm kom från paradiset (A Storm Came from Paradise), which has been translated into French, German, English, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, and Dutch, and was awarded the SvD Literature Prize in 2012. For the same book, Anyuru was nominated for the August Prize and the Nordic Council Literature Prize and was awarded the Ivar Lo-Johansson prize. His novel De kommer att drunkna i sina mödrars tårar (They Will Drown in Their Mothers’ Tears, 2017) was translated into many languages and awarded a.o. the August Prize 2017 for Swedish Fiction Book of the Year.

Athena Farrokhzad is a poet, playwright, translator, and literary critic, based in Stockholm. She has published four collections of poetry and translated authors such as Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Juliana Spahr and Natalie Diaz into Swedish. She has worked as a teacher at the creative writing program at Biskops-Arnö and as the head of literature at The House of Culture in Stockholm. She is currently a professor of poetry at Linköpings University. Her latest book,Tragedierna (Albert Bonniers förlag, 2025) includes three plays written in the footsteps of Euripides’ Medea, Sophocles’ Antigone and Aeschylus’ The Persians.