A collaborative project between Australian and Afghan artists and journalists will examine the legacy of 20 years of conflict in Afghanistan through a series of art exhibitions and multi-disciplinary events over the next 12 months.
The Twenty Years project will launch on Thursday, with a public forum across two evenings featuring Afghan musicians, poets, journalists and activists in Australia and around the world.
The forum, which has support from the advocacy and research body Diversity Arts Australia and the Australia Council, will examine the role of Afghans in the diaspora, and the future of culture and media in Afghanistan under the Taliban.
The co-founder of the project, freelance journalist Antony Loewenstein, said Twenty Years would dissect the role western powers, including Australia, played in the occupation of Afghanistan, media coverage and the rise of Islamophobia post 9/11 through video, photography, text, public events and art exhibitions.
“The real, unvarnished history of the post-9/11 war, now that the Taliban once again controls the country, is a grim parade of western-backed war crimes, mistakes, ignorance, racism and silencing,” he said.
“Pro-war pundits, gung-ho journalists and belligerent politicians receive far too much airtime pontificating on a war that they helped start and fuel for two decades.
“We want to offer a different, more reflective and critical perspective.”
The Afghan photojournalist Najiba Noori will participate in this week’s Australian forum from her new home base of Paris.
She told Guardian Australia there was no future for her work in her home country.
“I am following social media. The University of Kabul has a new Taliban-appointed head who has called for the death of all journalists. The art faculty has been closed. So has the music school where my brother was studying guitar.”
The Afghanistan-born visual artist and poet Elyas Alavi, who gained asylum in Australia as a Hazara refugee in 2007, staged an exhibition of his work in Kabul in 2014 and returned to his home country again in 2016.
He said he now feared he may never be able to return to Afghanistan.
“A friend tells me he is burning his paintings ... and I’ve heard of people burning their philosophy books and art books,” he said.
“Now he and some of his family, most of them are living in hiding because they just don’t know what’s going to happen. The Taliban are checking people’s mobiles ... looking for [content] that is against Sharia law, and they are [targeting] writers, artists, the LGBTQI community.”
Alavi said the Afghan-Australian community felt betrayed by the Australian government.
“The prime minister says Afghanistan is a tragic country with a tragic history and Australia cannot do anything, it is the fate of these people and it’s always going to be a tragedy,” the now Adelaide-based artist said.
“But the government can get more people at risk out, more than the 3,000 extra visas they’ve announced ... and there are no permanent visas for those who are already here.”
Sydney-based Loewenstein, who travelled to Afghanistan in 2012 and 2015 for research on a book and film, said the Twenty Years project had given him a unique opportunity to work with Afghan artists to create something lasting that would challenge the media-led stereotypes of Afghanistan.
“I vividly remember reporting from insurgent territory in the country and seeing and hearing the Afghans caught in the middle of a senseless war,” he said. “Afghan art is one way to resist this futility and build something beautiful and provocative.”
• The first two online events by Twenty Years, featuring Afghan artists and journalists living in Australia, the UK and France, take place at 6.15pm on 7 and 8 October
