Practically a yr after its debut at a constructing close to Columbia College’s campus, Hind’s Home, an artwork exhibition and neighborhood training occasion, returned to a Washington Heights bookstore this weekend in a three-day occasion starting Saturday, October 11.
Final yr, an nameless group utilizing the moniker Hind’s Home Collective (HHC) organized the inaugural present inside a literary fraternity constructing steps from Columbia’s campus. The exhibition paid tribute to Hind Rijab, the five-year-old Palestinian little one who was killed by the Israeli army in 2024 as she known as for assist. The mission additionally examined supplies from the Gaza Solidarity Encampments, which the New York Police Division cleared with drive in a defining second of the pro-Palestinian protest motion. In April 2024, Columbia scholar protesters occupied Hamilton Corridor, an educational constructing on campus, and renamed it after Rajab.
Ranzer’s self-portraits have developed over the past two years to incorporate anti-ICE messages.
Recirculation, a subsidiary of the neighborhood bookstore Phrase Up positioned on a hundred and sixtieth Road and Riverside Drive, served because the venue for this yr’s teach-ins, workshops, and distributors. On the partitions hung artworks by present and former Columbia college students and different native artists, together with a putting portrait of Hind Rijab smiling and carrying a flower crown and keffiyeh.
Collaborating artist Ayanna Legros instructed Hyperallergic in a telephone name that this yr’s iteration was totally different in that it additionally included subject material associated to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and authoritarianism in the US. Because the first iteration of Hind’s Home, the Trump administration has vowed to punish worldwide college students who participated in pro-Palestine speech.
Ayanna Legros’s “Mother of the Protest Movement” (2025) (picture courtesy Ayanna Legros)
Legros, a mixed-media artist who grew up close to Columbia’s campus, exhibited a piece in tribute to Noor Abdalla, the spouse of Mahmoud Khalil, whose arrest and detention underneath the Trump administration’s Division of Homeland Safety triggered mass protests. Abdalla gave beginning to the couple’s son whereas Khalil, then a scholar at Columbia, was held in an immigration detention middle in Louisiana.
“I was thinking about [Mahmoud’s] wife,” Legros mentioned, describing her work. “I was thinking historically about women and the wives of people in social movements.”
Impressed by Haitian creative teams and traditions, comparable to Atis Rezistans and the Motion Saint-Soleil, Legros created a bottle sculpture embellished with Abdallah’s likeness and the Syrian flag, titled “Mother of the Protest Movement” (2025).
“Everyone knew that seeing a pregnant woman endure this was horrific, but it’s such a different experience when you have to think about somebody waking up and going to court, writing a full testimony,” Legros mentioned.
Ranzer’s rebuttal to an article within the Free Press was on show as a part of the Hind’s Home artwork exhibit.
Artist and designer Meryl Ranzer, who participated in final yr’s Hind’s Home, introduced together with her a choice of interpretive self-portraits created each day since October 7, 2023. Her newer works, mounted on Recirculation’s partitions, say “abolish ICE” and “free Palestine.”
“I thought it was important to make sure we talk about the interconnectedness of all these struggles,” Ranzer mentioned.
Distributors offered prints and reproductions by artists in Gaza, together with illustrations of cats made by two sisters, Rahaf and Anfal, who instructed Hyperallergic in a WhatsApp message that they’re positioned within the Al-Nuseirat camp in Gaza. The sisters mentioned they fee customized cat portraits via the Instagram account Meow-mento Designs.
The three-day occasion unfolded as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took maintain.
“It’s the beginning, in a lot of ways, of rebuilding and not allowing governments to whitewash what they did,” Razner mentioned. “Accountability is important, and so I think events like this that keep reminding people and putting the Palestinians, the people of Gaza, at the front of mind are important.”
Distributors offered prints and reproductions by artists in Gaza.
Razner’s each day self-portraits
