Queer Monuments and Super Surveillance
Batikh Batikh
at Icebox Mall and The Rotunda
Batikh Batikh (BB) is a pop-up cinema and gallery that rents spaces to bring South-West Asian North African (SWANA) cinema to Philadelphia and exhibit solo exhibitions of local emerging SWANA women and LGBTQ+ artists. Based on a decolonial and anti-capitalist art model, all art is free to access, featured artists are paid, and 100% of proceeds go to mutual aid in the SWANA region. Founded in 2022 by Lebanese-American filmmaker and curator, Sarah Trad, the volunteer collective addresses the lack of SWANA programming and anti-zionist policies in the local and general art sector. BB is the intersection of museum-quality programming, cultural preservation, direct action and mutual aid. We table at all events, providing community resources like Know Your Rights Cards in Arabic and letter-writing to representatives or media outlets to raise awareness about the genocides in Sudan and Palestine.
BB’s project, Queer Monuments and Super Surveillance, features two solo exhibitions of work by local artists, Alyssa Khalifa and Basak Kilicbeyli, on view at IceBox Project Space, and partners with cinéSPEAK to host cinema exploring the surveillance of Arab Americans throughout U.S. history as a powerful counter-narrative to the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations. Each exhibition focuses on queerness and personal archives, collections and figures, standing as a temporary monument and hub for the local SWANA queer and immigrant community, during a year of xenophobic and homophobic propaganda.
ABOUT THE QUEER MONUMENTS
Basak Kilicbeyli’s exhibition Nausea rose in my throat challenges the sofra/sofreh/sofrah, a tradition of a cloth spread on the floor around which people gather to share a meal. The featured installation redefines the sofra as a shared surface on which bodies, disputes, needs, and forms of belonging coexist. Inspired by historical events such as the 2013 anti-government Gezi Park protests and the falling out of a friendship in 1982 between feminist poets, June Jordan, Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich, the exhibition questions: How do we bear with each other while being bare with each other?
The exhibition Nyctinastic Cycle by Alyssa Khalifa is an intimate portrait of queer identity, self-reflection and being in a body experiencing chronic pain. Referencing her Egyptian Lebanese heritage, Khalifa’s work includes mixed media paintings and sculptures that feature the various textures of papyrus paper, sumac, and za’atar. Khalifa reflects on the cycle of aging, death and rebirth, as well as the lotus as a metaphor for queer actualization. The queer body is forever aging, creating new blossoms, and shedding dead flowers we no longer need. Every lotus, every blossom, belongs to the history and fabric of the plant, and like our culture, it needs to be remembered, preserved, and felt.
ABOUT SUPER SURVEILLANCE
BB will also host SUPER SURVEILLANCE, screening Assia Boundaoui’s film, The Feeling of Being Watched (2018) at the Rotunda on October 10th from 7-9pm. The film follows journalist Assia Boundaoui who investigates rumors of surveillance in her Arab-American neighborhood in Chicago, and uncovers one of the largest FBI terrorism probes conducted before 9/11 and reveals its enduring impact on the community. Tickets are a suggested donation of $10-30 and 100% of proceeds will go to mutual aid in Sudan and Palestine. No one turned away for lack of funds. The Rotunda is wheelchair accessible and masks are REQUIRED.
- EXHIBITION DATES: October 8 – November 15, 2026
- OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, October 8, 6–9PM
- Everything Must Go! CLOSING RECEPTION: Thursday, November 12, 6–9PM
- IceBox Mall GALLERY HOURS: Wed 6 – 9pm, Thu 6 – 9pm, Fri 12 – 9pm, Sat 12 – 9pm, Sun 12 – 6pm
- LOW SENSORY HOURS: Thursdays, October 15 and November 5, 6–9PM
- Super Surveillance: The Feeling of Being Watched Film Screening: October 10, 7-9pm @ The Rotunda
ARTIST BIOS
Alyssa Khalifa is an Egyptian-Lebanese-American painter, sculptor and educator with a BFA from Aquinas College and MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA). Using acrylic and oil paint, plaster, foam, and papyrus paper, she explores the juxtaposition of tender figuration and the physicality of mixed materials through a multicultural, queer lens. With over eight years of teaching experience, she currently teaches 7th-12th mixed media art and pre-college painting and drawing courses in Philadelphia.
Basak Kilicbeyli is a Philadelphia-based textile artist from Turkey. She ventured into printmaking during her BFA in Graphic Design at Yeditepe University. Pursuing an MFA at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA) honed her craft in textiles and provided Basak with opportunities to exhibit at venues like Information Space. The Woodmere Art Museum proudly houses one of her rugs in its permanent collection, making her the collection’s first Turkish queer woman artist.
Assia Boundaoui is an Algerian-American filmmaker and investigative journalist. Her debut short film, J’ADORE NAWAL, set in a Muslim women’s hair salon in Chicago for HBO Documentary Films premiered at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Assia was named one of Filmmaker Magazine’s 2018 “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” in 2020 was honored with the Livingston Award for national reporting and in 2022 was given a United States Artist award. Assia was a fellow at the MIT Open Documentary Lab, where she incubated a community co-created, site-specific installation, the Inverse Surveillance Project. Her most recent film, ESTRANGED LETTERS, a short documentary following the creative process of an Iranian-American artist, had its world premiere at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2024.
