Moshtari Hilal: Beautiful Rebellion

Who gets to decide what is considered beautiful? As beauty and conformity morph into one, it can be tempting to try to force our bodies into shapes they were never designed to fit. Today, authors Jill Burke (How to Be a Renaissance Woman), Emma Dabiri (Disobedient Bodies), and Hamburg and Berlin based Moshtari Hilal (Ugliness) deconstruct harmful beauty standards and explore how we can reclaim and celebrate our gloriously rebellious forms. 
Chaired by Anahit Behrooz.
Moshtari Hilal is a visual artist, writer and curator based in Hamburg and Berlin.

She studied Middle Eastern Studies and Political Science in Hamburg, Berlin and London with a focus on Gender, Decolonial and Cultural Studies. She is the co-founder of the online collective AVAH (Afghan Visual Arts and History) and Berlin-based research project CCC (Curating Through Conflict with Care).

Her current artistic practice is shaped bythe (self) portrait and family archive, both approached in an eclectic manner in her search for a visual language.

Hanser most recently published "Ugliness (Hässlichkeit)" for which she was awarded the Hamburg Literature Prize 2023 for non-fiction. The English Translation "Ugliness" will be available in February 2025 from New Vessel Press.