I’ve been wanting to do a major interview with Amin Husain and Nitasha Dhillon for years. As the duo behind MTL+ Collective and organizers with Decolonize This Place, FTP, Gulf Ultra Luxury Faction (GULF), and other groups through the years, they’ve played an active role in pressuring New York’s art community and institutions to deal with the issues that have long been overlooked. Though well known for organizing with a focus on worker, indigenous, Black, Palestinian, and migrant rights, both Husain and Dhillon are also artists.
In this wide-ranging, two-part conversation, I speak to Husain and Dhillon, who came to our studio back in May, before the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, about their lives, ideas, and what they think of an art community that is still grappling with notions of justice, freedom, and equality.
Part one is a shorter 34-minute interview to introduce you to the pair and their lives, while part two (81 minutes) offers a closer look at their work and the various challenges they’ve faced with the Guggenheim Museum and the Brooklyn Museum, while offering some insights into what’s next.
Instead of music for this episode, I’ve incorporated the sounds of various protests where I’ve encountered the pair, including the 2017 Anti-Columbus Day Tour at the American Museum of Natural History.
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The hypocrisy of these two is out of this world. They call themselves artists yet seek to censor and even destroy art they don’t like. They call themselves decolonizers yet invade a foreign country and attempt to destroy its culture. These two are absolutely vile scumbugs and it’s disgusting you praise them as if they’re doing good. They are the embodiment of evil.
Unbelievable how Israel and Palestine come to this discussion. Unbelievable that no one has the intelligence to look at the history of the region.
Llook up the Khartoum conference of 1967
And see how much the Palestinians want a state .
Sorry for these two who are ignorant to many facts .
But go ahead and continue to spread lies and hatred – its very fashionable today.
Amazing that the Gazaan Palestinians oppressed by Hamas is not part of the discussion