workshop
GEDRUCKTE SOLIDARITÄTEN (Printed Solidarities)
conceived and lead by Sedra Arab & Engy Mohsen
27/01/ – 15/02/2026
Venue: Neue Mittelschule Herzgasse, 1100 Vienna and philomena+, Heinestraße 40, 1020 Vienna
copyright Engy Mohsen
How is solidarity lived? How can we express it in a democratic society? With which people/groups do we show solidarity—in our own environment, in our neighborhood, at the national and international level? Artists and cultural mediators Engy Mohsen and Sedra Arab explore this question in workshops with class 4c of Herzgasse Middle School. Sedra Arab, who also works as an anti-racism trainer, sensitizes the students to issues of diversity and cohesion in a pluralistic society. Graphic designer and artist Engy Mohsen introduces the students to the technique of screen printing on textiles.
In workshops at the school and in the art space, the students are introduced to the topic, gain insights into the work of the two cultural mediators, develop their own words, statements, and forms of solidarity, and design stencils. These are then used to screen print T-shirts.
During the exhibition period (15/02 – 11/04/2026), the students’ “printed solidarities”—their T-shirt prints—will be presented in the philomena+ art space alongside the interactive installation by Engy Mohsen and Sedra Arab. This allows the students to revisit their work together with friends and family at any time before it becomes their property.
artists
Sedra Arab (*1998, Aleppo) is a Vienna-based social worker, anti-racism facilitator, translator, and researcher. Her academic work explores how communities create safer spaces as contested, active practices of collective care, resistance, and healing. Grounded in decolonial and intersectional frameworks, her practice bridges scholarship and activism: translating critical theory into trauma-informed, community-based practice while bringing knowledge from the streets, community organising, and lived experience into academic and institutional spaces and back into collective action. Her approach resists the separation of care and politics. Through activism and facilitation, she works on racial justice, migration, and collective healing, centring community accountability, collective responsibility, and safer spaces as sites of resistance rather than individual resilience.
ENGY MOHSEN
Engy Mohsen (*1995 in Cairo) is an artist, curator, and researcher, working across self-published printed matter and collective, activist-driven constellations. Her research examines the emergence of independent art schools in the Arab world, with particular attention to their entanglements with foreign cultural funding and the ways these institutions negotiate cultural sovereignty through decolonial pedagogies. In her artistic practice, Engy Mohsen works through acts of convening and conversation. Her projects often begin as texts—such as grant proposals, fragments of dialogue, or scripts—which subsequently materialise in multiple forms, including book(lets), staged lecture-performances, and game-based formats. Engy Mohsen holds an MSc in Modern Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford, an MA in Transdisciplinary Studies in the Arts from Zürich University of the Arts. She is one of the founding members of K-oh-llective, a platform for art publishing and shared resource building in the Arab World, and part of the curatorial team of Les Complices*, a self-organised community-based art space in Zürich.
Partners
