Join us on Thursday 8th October, 6 – 8pm for Edelweiss Pirates, a collaborative workshop and installation series with artists Brutus Labiche and Ajahee Sekkm-Miles.

Responding to the rise of far-right rhetoric and the increasing use of national symbols to promote exclusionary ideas of identity and belonging, this session invites participants to reclaim and reinterpret national symbols through collage. Using UK tabloids, personal archives and the Auto Italia archive, participants will rework images and texts to create new interpretations of national symbols and narrative that question how national identity is represented.

The project takes its name from the Edelweiss Pirates, informal youth groups who resisted the rigidity of Nazi ideology. Their refusal to conform, and their creation of their own rituals and forms of belonging, provides a starting point for the workshop, which considers how identity can be challenged and reimagined.

Edelweiss Pirates is an ongoing series in which each workshop becomes a temporary installation and contributes to a growing transnational archive. These workshops explore how identity is lived, constructed and redefined across communities and borders.

Originally developed in Switzerland, this will be the first Edelweiss Pirates workshop in the UK.

This free event will take place at Auto Italia. To book, follow the link here or email info@artworkassociation.org

Brutus Labiche is a Swiss-Rwandan multidisciplinary artist whose practice encompasses painting, installation and performance. Her work explores the aesthetic expansion of Swissness through a world-building approach, in which Swiss symbols and references to Black digital cultures coexist in symbiosis. Using materials such as hay, tile, found objects,  textiles, synthetic hair and sound, she activates folklore as a living archive, reinventing forms of belonging and narratives.

Her work has been shown at Circuit Lausanne, the Ethnographic Museum of Geneva, Espace Topic,Forde Geneva, 198 Contemporary London, ICA London, Photo Vogue, Photo Schweiz, Valentin 61.

Ajahee Sekkm-Miles (she/they) is a Brooklyn-born Cultural Arts Curator, Producer, and antidisciplinary artist committed to amplifying narratives of the global majority. Her practice bridges archival research, cultural traditions, and curated artistic experiences to connect Afro-diasporic communities worldwide—creating space for authenticity, grounding, and collective freedom. She holds an MA in Curating Art and Public Programmes from London South Bank University and Whitechapel Gallery, which continues to shape her international approach to cultural work.

Ajahee’s creative practice spans multi-medium exhibitions, public programming, film, photography, and sound-based works, using art as a vehicle for expression, activism, and cultural preservation. She has worked with institutions such as Whitechapel Gallery, ST.ART Gallery, Superposition Gallery, and 198 Contemporary Arts and Learning.