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The Aesthetic of Liberation
Building a Visual Language for Liberation
The world is saturated with images of our death. But where are the images of our defiance? Gaza burns. Sudan bleeds. The Global South resists in every corner, yet that resistance is shadowed, censored, and erased. So much of what we see frames our struggle in grief, not in power.
My people—the Sudanese people—have risen up time and time again whenever injustice is imposed on the masses. The Palestinian people have resisted Zionist occupation for over 75 years and continue to fight for liberation despite everything thrown at them. Still, that fight is distorted at every turn. But this shouldn’t surprise us, because culture is a weapon. And in the hands of empire, it’s used against us.
Western media knows that images of resistance threaten its hegemony. It’s why we are bombarded with footage of death, not uprisings, and grief, not militancy. It’s why artists and organizers are shadowbanned, censored, and silenced. Because visibility itself, when tied to struggle, is dangerous. What we see shapes what we believe is possible. And when we’re only allowed to see mourning, not momentum, resistance becomes harder to imagine.

That understanding is what led me to make Bullets of Freedom. Not to tell a story of tragedy, but of a struggle destined for victory. To contribute to the political struggle, to make art that acts.
I’ve always believed that film should be a weapon, sharpened in service of the people. I didn’t want to just tell stories. I wanted to make work that resists.
But belief alone doesn’t pay for equipment. At one point, my camera broke and I had no money to fix it. For a while, I felt paralyzed, like I had something urgent to say but no means to say it. But that limitation became a test of my will. How far was I willing to go to communicate what I believed in? What would I do when the tools were taken away, when the resources weren’t there? It wasn’t the end of my filmmaking, it was a confrontation with its purpose. A moment that demanded I either give up or find a new way forward.

I turned to animation, not because I wanted to become an animator, but because I needed to communicate what I stand for. Over the course of nearly eight months, with nothing but time and political intent, I taught myself how to build a film from scratch. Using Blender, I constructed entire 3D environments, rigged characters, built lighting setups, and crafted each shot with precision and care. I turned to CLO3D for garment design and learned to simulate clothing that looked worn, urgent, and real. I taught myself how to animate fire, cast shadows across rubble, and sync every movement with the emotional weight it carried. This wasn’t just a technical process, it was a political one. Every frame was an act of resistance against silence and erasure. This kind of necessity—creating with whatever tools are available, in defiance of material constraints—is what Third Cinema has always embodied.
For filmmakers like Mustafa Abu Ali and the PLO Film Unit, cinema was never about polish or prestige. It was a weapon passed hand-to-hand in exile, edited in refugee camps, screened on bedsheets. It was about message over medium, urgency over industry. In that tradition, I wasn’t just animating a film, I was forging a weapon from the scraps I had at my disposal.

That weapon became Bullets of Freedom—an animated short film and direct-action project rooted in the legacy of Palestinian resistance.
The story follows a Palestinian fighter on a journey of political awakening guided by the revolutionary memory of Leila Khaled. Her voice—woven through archival interview clips—doesn’t just narrate the film, it defines its ideological spine. Each quote was intentionally matched with a specific scene, forming a visual dialogue between her words and the history they evoke. Nearly every frame references a real moment in the Palestinian struggle or nods to a film from the Palestinian Third Cinema tradition, whether through imagery, color, or camera angle. Bullets of Freedom was made to reward close watching. It invites viewers to return to it over and over, to discover a new layer of resistance with each viewing.

This wasn’t my first attempt at using animation as an intervention. In 2023, I released Pain Relief, a short film that explores the story of Sudanese painter and former political prisoner Ibrahim El-Salahi. This piece centered revolutionary memory in the face of trauma, and it marked my first step into using self-taught animation as a tool to preserve and project struggle. But with Bullets of Freedom, I wanted to push that further, not just to reflect resistance, but to materially contribute to it.
At the center of Bullets of Freedom is a recreated version of Leila Khaled’s bullet ring—originally fashioned from the pin of her first grenade and a bullet from her pistol. I designed and produced 50 of these rings and launched a fundraiser, which contributed 100% of the proceeds to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for Gaza. Within a week, the project raised $4,000. By the end, we surpassed $5,000. It was a small but tangible example of what happens when art is politicized and intentionally tied to material solidarity.
Despite garnering hundreds of thousands of views on social media and selling out film screenings, several posts were removed or hidden. Like so much Palestinian content, the project was deliberately suppressed, flagged, restricted, and silenced under the guise of community standards. This wasn’t accidental. The work was treated as a threat. Because it was. Not to the people, but to those who uphold genocide, occupation, and the systems that sustain them. The moment the film reel becomes ammunition, every shot becomes a bullet fired against silence, echoing far beyond the screen.

When our art is tied to real action, to organizing, to the redistribution of resources and power, it ceases to be content and becomes a threat.
This is why platforms shadowban our posts, censor our images, and suppress our reach. On Instagram, fundraising links vanish. Palestinian flags are flagged. Stories that show solidarity are erased while apolitical aesthetics remain untouched. This is the algorithm doing the bidding of empire.

This is exactly why our art must move people and move with people. If it is not tied to action, if it doesn’t live beyond the platform, beyond the screen, it is too easily swallowed by the algorithm. We can’t afford symbolism without substance. In a time of global counterrevolution and digital repression, our culture must mobilize, organize, and resist. We need art that doesn’t just document struggle. We need art that is struggle.

{
"article":
{
"title" : "The Aesthetic of Liberation: Building a Visual Language for Liberation",
"author" : "Mazen Alsafi",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/the-aesthetic-of-liberation",
"date" : "2025-05-06 10:10:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/IMG_2201.jpeg",
"excerpt" : "The world is saturated with images of our death. But where are the images of our defiance? Gaza burns. Sudan bleeds. The Global South resists in every corner, yet that resistance is shadowed, censored, and erased. So much of what we see frames our struggle in grief, not in power.",
"content" : "The world is saturated with images of our death. But where are the images of our defiance? Gaza burns. Sudan bleeds. The Global South resists in every corner, yet that resistance is shadowed, censored, and erased. So much of what we see frames our struggle in grief, not in power.My people—the Sudanese people—have risen up time and time again whenever injustice is imposed on the masses. The Palestinian people have resisted Zionist occupation for over 75 years and continue to fight for liberation despite everything thrown at them. Still, that fight is distorted at every turn. But this shouldn’t surprise us, because culture is a weapon. And in the hands of empire, it’s used against us.Western media knows that images of resistance threaten its hegemony. It’s why we are bombarded with footage of death, not uprisings, and grief, not militancy. It’s why artists and organizers are shadowbanned, censored, and silenced. Because visibility itself, when tied to struggle, is dangerous. What we see shapes what we believe is possible. And when we’re only allowed to see mourning, not momentum, resistance becomes harder to imagine.That understanding is what led me to make Bullets of Freedom. Not to tell a story of tragedy, but of a struggle destined for victory. To contribute to the political struggle, to make art that acts. I’ve always believed that film should be a weapon, sharpened in service of the people. I didn’t want to just tell stories. I wanted to make work that resists.But belief alone doesn’t pay for equipment. At one point, my camera broke and I had no money to fix it. For a while, I felt paralyzed, like I had something urgent to say but no means to say it. But that limitation became a test of my will. How far was I willing to go to communicate what I believed in? What would I do when the tools were taken away, when the resources weren’t there? It wasn’t the end of my filmmaking, it was a confrontation with its purpose. A moment that demanded I either give up or find a new way forward.I turned to animation, not because I wanted to become an animator, but because I needed to communicate what I stand for. Over the course of nearly eight months, with nothing but time and political intent, I taught myself how to build a film from scratch. Using Blender, I constructed entire 3D environments, rigged characters, built lighting setups, and crafted each shot with precision and care. I turned to CLO3D for garment design and learned to simulate clothing that looked worn, urgent, and real. I taught myself how to animate fire, cast shadows across rubble, and sync every movement with the emotional weight it carried. This wasn’t just a technical process, it was a political one. Every frame was an act of resistance against silence and erasure. This kind of necessity—creating with whatever tools are available, in defiance of material constraints—is what Third Cinema has always embodied.For filmmakers like Mustafa Abu Ali and the PLO Film Unit, cinema was never about polish or prestige. It was a weapon passed hand-to-hand in exile, edited in refugee camps, screened on bedsheets. It was about message over medium, urgency over industry. In that tradition, I wasn’t just animating a film, I was forging a weapon from the scraps I had at my disposal.That weapon became Bullets of Freedom—an animated short film and direct-action project rooted in the legacy of Palestinian resistance.The story follows a Palestinian fighter on a journey of political awakening guided by the revolutionary memory of Leila Khaled. Her voice—woven through archival interview clips—doesn’t just narrate the film, it defines its ideological spine. Each quote was intentionally matched with a specific scene, forming a visual dialogue between her words and the history they evoke. Nearly every frame references a real moment in the Palestinian struggle or nods to a film from the Palestinian Third Cinema tradition, whether through imagery, color, or camera angle. Bullets of Freedom was made to reward close watching. It invites viewers to return to it over and over, to discover a new layer of resistance with each viewing.This wasn’t my first attempt at using animation as an intervention. In 2023, I released Pain Relief, a short film that explores the story of Sudanese painter and former political prisoner Ibrahim El-Salahi. This piece centered revolutionary memory in the face of trauma, and it marked my first step into using self-taught animation as a tool to preserve and project struggle. But with Bullets of Freedom, I wanted to push that further, not just to reflect resistance, but to materially contribute to it.At the center of Bullets of Freedom is a recreated version of Leila Khaled’s bullet ring—originally fashioned from the pin of her first grenade and a bullet from her pistol. I designed and produced 50 of these rings and launched a fundraiser, which contributed 100% of the proceeds to the Middle East Children’s Alliance (MECA) for Gaza. Within a week, the project raised $4,000. By the end, we surpassed $5,000. It was a small but tangible example of what happens when art is politicized and intentionally tied to material solidarity.Despite garnering hundreds of thousands of views on social media and selling out film screenings, several posts were removed or hidden. Like so much Palestinian content, the project was deliberately suppressed, flagged, restricted, and silenced under the guise of community standards. This wasn’t accidental. The work was treated as a threat. Because it was. Not to the people, but to those who uphold genocide, occupation, and the systems that sustain them. The moment the film reel becomes ammunition, every shot becomes a bullet fired against silence, echoing far beyond the screen. When our art is tied to real action, to organizing, to the redistribution of resources and power, it ceases to be content and becomes a threat.This is why platforms shadowban our posts, censor our images, and suppress our reach. On Instagram, fundraising links vanish. Palestinian flags are flagged. Stories that show solidarity are erased while apolitical aesthetics remain untouched. This is the algorithm doing the bidding of empire.This is exactly why our art must move people and move with people. If it is not tied to action, if it doesn’t live beyond the platform, beyond the screen, it is too easily swallowed by the algorithm. We can’t afford symbolism without substance. In a time of global counterrevolution and digital repression, our culture must mobilize, organize, and resist. We need art that doesn’t just document struggle. We need art that is struggle."
}
,
"relatedposts": [
{
"title" : "Black Liberation Views on Palestine",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "essays",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/black-liberation-on-palestine",
"date" : "2025-10-17 09:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/mandela-keffiyeh.jpg",
"excerpt" : "",
"content" : "In understanding global politics, it is important to look at Black liberation struggles as one important source of moral perspective. So, when looking at Palestine, we look to Black leaders to see how they perceived the Palestinian struggle in relation to theirs, from the 1960’s to today.Why must we understand where the injustice lies? Because, as Desmond Tutu famously said, “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”{% for person in site.data.quotes-black-liberation-palestine %}{{ person.name }}{% for quote in person.quotes %}“{{ quote.text }}”{% if quote.source %}— {{ quote.source }}{% endif %}{% endfor %}{% endfor %}"
}
,
{
"title" : "First Anniversary Celebration of EIP",
"author" : "EIP Editors",
"category" : "events",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/1st-anniversary-of-eip",
"date" : "2025-10-14 18:01:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/WSA_EIP_Launch_Cover.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent Publishing",
"content" : "Celebrating One Year of Independent PublishingJoin Everything is Political on November 21st for the launch of our End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine.This members-only evening will feature a benefit dinner, cocktails, and live performances in celebration of a year of independent media, critical voices, and collective resistance.The EventNovember 21, 2025, 7-11pmLower Manhattan, New YorkLaunching our End-of-Year Special Edition MagazineSpecial appearances and performancesFood & Drink includedTickets are extremely limited, reserve yours now!Become an annual print member: get x back issues of EIP, receive the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine, and come to the Anniversary Celebration.$470Already a member? Sign in to get your special offer. Buy Ticket $150 Just $50 ! and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine Buy ticket $150 and get the End-of-Year Special Edition Magazine "
}
,
{
"title" : "Miu Miu Transforms the Apron From Trad Wife to Boss Lady: The sexiest thing in Paris was a work garment",
"author" : "Khaoula Ghanem",
"category" : "",
"url" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/readings/miu-miu-transforms-the-apron-from-trad-wife-to-boss-lady",
"date" : "2025-10-14 13:05:00 -0400",
"img" : "https://everythingispolitical.com/uploads/Cover_EIP_MiuMiu_Apron.jpg",
"excerpt" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.",
"content" : "Miuccia Prada has a habit of taking the least “fashion” thing in the room and making it the argument. For Spring 2026 at Miu Miu, the argument is the apron; staged not as a coy retro flourish but as a total system. The show’s mise-en-scène read like a canteen or factory floor with melamine-like tables, rationalist severity, a whiff of cleaning fluid. In other words, a runway designed to force a conversation about labor before any sparkle could distract us.From the opening look—German actress Sandra Hüller in a utilitarian deep-blue apron layered over a barn jacket and neat blue shirting—the thesis was loud: the “cover” becomes the thing itself. As silhouettes marched on, aprons multiplied and mutated—industrial drill cotton with front pockets, raw canvas, taffeta and cloqué silk, lace-edged versions that flirted with lingerie, even black leather and crystal-studded incarnations that reframed function as ornament. What the apron traditionally shields (clothes, bodies, “the good dress”) was inverted; the protection became the prized surface. Prada herself spelled it out: “The apron is my favorite piece of clothing… it symbolizes women, from factories through to serving to the home.”Miu Miu Spring 2026 Ready-to-Wear. SuppliedThis inversion matters historically. The apron’s earliest fashion-adjacent life was industrial. It served as a barrier against grease, heat, stain. It was a token of paid and unpaid care. Miu Miu tapped that lineage directly (canvas, work belts, D-ring hardware), then sliced it against domestic codes (florals, ruffles, crochet), and finally pushed into nightlife with bejeweled and leather bibs. The garment’s migration across materials made its social migrations visible. It is a kitchen apron, yes, but also one for labs, hospitals, and factories; the set and styling insisted on that plurality.What makes the apron such a loaded emblem is not just what it covers, but what it reveals about who has always been working. Before industrialization formalized labor into factory shifts and wages, women were already performing invisible labour, the kind that doesn’t exist on payrolls but sits at the foundation of every functioning society. They were cooking, cleaning, raising children, nursing the ill. These tasks were foundational to every economy and yet absent from every ledger. Even when women entered the industrial workforce, from textile plants to wartime assembly lines, their domestic responsibilities did not disappear, they doubled. In that context, the apron here is a quiet manifesto for the strength that goes unrecorded, unthanked, and yet keeps civilization running.The algorithmic rise of the “tradwife,” the influencer economy that packages domesticity as soft power, is the contemporary cultural shadow here. Miu Miu’s apron refuses that rehearsal. In fact, it’s intentionally awkward—oversized, undone, worn over bikinis or with sturdy shoes—so the viewer can’t flatten it into Pinterest-ready nostalgia. Critics noted the collection as a reclamation, a rebuttal to the flattening forces of the feed: the apron as a uniform for endurance rather than submission. The show notes framed it simply as “a consideration of the work of women,” a reminder that the invisible economies of effort—paid, unpaid, emotional—still structure daily life.If that sounds unusually explicit for a luxury runway, consider the designer. Prada trained as a mime at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, earned a PhD in political science, joined the Italian Communist Party, and was active in the women’s rights movement in 1970s Milan. Those facts are not trivia; they are the grammar of her clothes. Decades of “ugly chic” were, essentially, a slow campaign against easy consumption and default beauty. In 2026, the apron becomes the newest dialect. An emblem drawn from leftist feminist history, recoded into a product that still has to sell. That tension—belief versus business—is the Miuccia paradox, and it’s precisely why these aprons read as statements, not trends.The runway narrative traced a journey from function to fetish. Early looks were squarely utilitarian—thick cottons, pocketed bibs—before migrating toward fragility and sparkle. Lace aprons laid transparently over swimmers; crystal-studded aprons slipped across cocktail territory; leather apron-dresses stiffened posture into armor. The sequencing proposed the same silhouette can encode labor, intimacy, and spectacle depending on fabrication. If most brands smuggle “workwear” in as set dressing, Miu Miu forced it onto the body as the central garment and an unmissable reminder that the feminine is often asked to be both shield and display at once.It’s instructive to read this collection against the house’s last mega-viral object: the micro-mini of Spring 2022, a pleated, raw-hem wafer that colonized timelines and magazine covers. That skirt’s thesis was exposure—hip bones and hemlines as post-lockdown spectacle, Y2K nostalgia framed as liberation-lite. The apron, ironically, covers. Where the micro-mini trafficked in the optics of freedom (and the speed of virality), the apron asks about the conditions that make freedom possible: who launders, who cooks, who cares? To move from “look at me” to “who is working here?” is a pivot from optics to ethics, without abandoning desire. (The aprons are, after all, deeply covetable.) In a platform economy that still rewards the shortest hemline with the biggest click-through, this is a sophisticated counter-program.Yet the designer is not romanticizing toil. There’s wit in the ruffles and perversity in the crystals; neither negate labor, they metabolize it. The most striking image is the apron treated as couture-adjacent. Traditionally, an apron protects the precious thing beneath; here, the apron is the precious thing. You could call that hypocrisy—luxurizing the uniform of workers. Or, strategy, insisting that the symbols of care and effort deserve visibility and investment.Of course, none of this exists in a vacuum. The “tradwife” script thrives because it is aesthetically legible and commercially scalable. It packages gender ideology as moodboard. Miu Miu counters with garments whose legibility flickers. The collection’s best looks ask viewers to reconcile tenderness with toughness, convenience with care, which is exactly the mental choreography demanded of women in every context from office to home to online.If you wanted a season-defining “It” item, you’ll still find it. The apron is poised to proliferate across fast-fashion and luxury alike. But the deeper success is structural: Miu Miu re-centered labor as an aesthetic category. That’s rarer than a viral skirt. It’s a reminder that clothes don’t merely decorate life, they describe and negotiate it. In making the apron the subject rather than the prop, Prada turned a garment of service into a platform for agency. It’s precisely the kind of cultural recursion you’d expect from a designer shaped by feminist politics, who never stopped treating fashion as an instrument of thought as much as style.The last image to hold onto is deceptively simple: a woman in an apron, neither fetishized nor infantilized, striding, hands free. Not a costume for nostalgia, not a meme for the feed, but a working uniform reframed, respected, and suddenly, undeniably beautiful. That is Miu Miu’s provocation for Spring 2026: the work behind the work, made visible at last."
}
]
}