Animals are deeply social beings whose very survival stands in resistance to a totalizing political order. Though they do not speak, their songs resonate and their images speak for themselves.

As dehumanization weighs on our political reality, looking at animals opens up another view. This selection takes multispecies encounters as sites for world-making and unmaking. Departing from the colonial exhibition of the zoo, the works follow animals in and around West Asia, bearing witness to their unspoken resistance to the violence of language, occupation, extraction, and the gaze.

After all, man is a political animal—but not the only political animal.

Aya Jamaleddine is an anthropologist and video-maker.

With moving image works by Bert Haanstra, Sharif Waked, Nashashibi/Skaer, Jela Hasler, Dala Nasser, Panos Aprahamian, Karthik Pandian, Wael Shawky, Maissa Maatouk, and South of Ajdabiya.