Solidarity Must Be Defended

This anthology weaves together gestures and alignments of transnational solidarity within the visual arts during the Cold War era. It surveys both grand initiatives and tragic misfires from an entangled, decolonizing world.

The starting point for the anthology was the Budapest premiere of Naeem Mohaiemen’s film Two Meetings and a Funeral (2017), curated by Eszter Szakács at tranzit.hu. The book’s title is an homage to Michel Foucault’s Society Must Be Defended (1976). We take up Foucault’s short- lived enthusiasm for the 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution as a case of misrecognition due to judgments formed in the heat of the moment. We start from this event to ask: Is every action capable of building solidarity, or can it become counterproductive when carried out with challenging allies, ambiguous manifestos, and accelerated timelines? This is a partial story of the dream of working beyond borders, inhabited by dramatic protagonists and triumphant moments, coming together (and apart) across sutures and fault lines. We believe, in the end, that transnational solidarity is always worth celebrating, and also difficult to inhabit.

Naeem Mohaiemen exhibition
Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH
(February 13–May 24, 2026)