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Join us on Saturday, November 18, 5:00 pm at Interference Archive in Brooklyn, New York, to celebrate the publication of We Are Many: Defending Women & Sex Worker Human Rights, featuring comics from the frontlines of activism. 

A Cypher Comics anthology curated by Beldan Sezen and Adam Shapiro, born from collaboration between illustrators and human rights defenders, We Are Many centers the narratives of women and sex worker human rights in Armenia, Australia Brazil, Afghanistan, Puerto Rico, Sudan, Mexico, Ukraine, and more countries, in a range of artistic and illustrative styles. The idea is to present comics as the eyewitnesses to grassroots activism and organizing; to pry away narrative control from outsider reporters and international ambassadors and instead platform local activists and organizations. 

A rough, energetic illustration of a sex workers’ collective fighting for legalization in Australia sits alongside a spunky collage of a trans woman rapping about empowerment in Brazil. The muslim women of Sri Lanka speak alongside the voices of unnamed feminists in Iraq. The cause of women’s rights even unites the warring nations of Armenia and Azerbaijan. Radical politics, solidarity, and a dogged pursuit for a better tomorrow links the first-hand accounts in We Are Many: Defending Women and Sex Worker Human Rights.

The book launch will feature a short talk with Beldan Sezen, co-curator of the anthology, along with small and large prints of art work featured in the collection that will be available to purchase along with copies of the book. 

Join us to learn about the incredible movements propelling change at the frontlines of women’s rights, the dynamic narratives included in the anthology, and the heartwarming stories of solidarity across borders and movements. 

About the Artist: 

Beldan Sezen (1967, Germany) is an artist, writer and M.A. in Political Sciences. Being Turkish by ethnicity, German by birth, and a resident of both the Netherlands and the U.S., allows her to observe society polyangularly. She was awarded with a Global Arts Fund by the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice (2015), and in 2018 by the city of Amsterdam with a development grant. Sezen is recipient of the 2022 Herzog August Bibliothek Artists’ Book Prize Fellow and has been an artist-in-residence at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program and the Artists League Residency at Vytlacil, NY. Her books are collected privately and by institutions, including the US Library of Congress, Deutsche Nationalbibliothek and KB Nationale Bibliotheek Van Nederland. As a curator of artists books, she is part of the Booklyn Artists Alliance. She is the co-founder and creative director of Cypher magazine.

About the Publisher

Radix Media is a worker-owned, union printer and independent publisher based in Brooklyn, Nw York. A non-hierarchical publisher, their titles have received acclaim from PEN Awards, Foreword Indies, and the Eric Offer Awards. Learn more at https://radixmedia.org/