ostZone - Moussa Mbarek 19. March 2025

While Lenin appeared as a leader on huge mosaics in East Germany, in our country it was Gaddafi. Public spaces were emblazoned with symbols of socialism, scenes from working class people’s everyday lives and images celebrating how the country had progressed and developed under the socialist regime. The murals were designed to raise viewers’ awareness of political aims and increase their loyalty to the government.

All this did not really exist for me. Because the people in the far south, on the edge of the Sahara, tended to be forgotten. Our political education was nevertheless very similar to that in the GDR. My experience here in the East, in Dresden, discovering relics of the time before reunification, was like travelling back in time to a past that is two thousand kilometres away.

Before the Libyan civil war in 2011, art that resisted Muammar al-Gaddafi’s regime only took on a limited number of forms. The authoritarian regime repressed all types of oppositional art and culture, and strictly controlled artistic production within the country’s borders. Even so, there were a handful of artists and intellectuals who incorporated subtle signs of resistance into their works by bringing up sensitive topics metaphorically or cryptically. Such forms of resistance were, however, few and far between, and were often produced and spread underground or in other countries.

It was the outbreak of civil war and the overthrowing of the Gaddafi regime that allowed the emergence of resistance art: various forms of artistic expression opposing the authoritarian regime and fighting for freedom and democracy in Libya.

Freedom of expression, public debate involving different political views, a willingness to engage in discourse - it took a while for me to trust this system. I have lived here for almost ten years now, and am still excited about all the possibilities within a democracy. I am not a citizen of this country, but I am a human who lives here and wants to help shape this country. The instrument I use to take part in social discourse is art. A medium which reaches people beyond the spoken word.

I got the chance to run workshops as part of the artistic programme accompanying the “Revolutionary Romances” exhibition. We invited participants to design their own posters using screen printing. In our printing workshop, we wanted to focus in on people’s highly personal views on what our society should be like. Nose to nose – side by side – hand in hand – heart to heart? What kind of a world do we live in? And what kind of a world would you like to live in?

One aim of particular importance to us was to engage with people from immigrant families. We were interested in the perspective of that section of the population, which is often only portrayed as a homogeneous mass.
Where else can you get first-hand experience of what it is like living in other places or in other societies?

It is only when you lose the freedom to air your wishes and thoughts, to think freely and to question social processes, that you know what it is to lose democracy.
Perhaps there would be less war in the world if people were able to think more freely. If religions and political dogmas are left aside, after all, what is left is people; simply people who want to live in peace.