Nearly a year after its debut at a building near Columbia University’s campus, Hind’s House, an art exhibition and community education event, returned to a Washington Heights bookstore this weekend in a three-day event beginning Saturday, October 11. Last year, an anonymous group using the moniker Hind’s House Collective (HHC) organized the inaugural show inside a literary fraternity building steps from Columbia’s campus. The exhibition paid tribute to Hind Rijab, the five-year-old Palestinian child who was killed by the Israeli military in 2024 as she called for help. The project also examined materials from the Gaza Solidarity Encampments, which the New York Police Department cleared with force in a defining moment of the pro-Palestinian protest movement. In April 2024, Columbia student protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, an academic building on campus, and renamed it after Rajab.Ranzer’s self-portraits have evolved over the last two years to include anti-ICE messages.Recirculation, a subsidiary of the community bookstore Word Up located on 160th Street and Riverside Drive, served as the venue for this year’s teach-ins, workshops, and vendors. On the walls hung artworks by current and former Columbia students and other local artists, including a striking portrait of Hind Rijab smiling and wearing a flower crown and keffiyeh. Participating artist Ayanna Legros told Hyperallergic in a phone call that this year’s iteration was different in that it also included subject matter related to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and authoritarianism in the United States. Since the first iteration of Hind’s House, the Trump administration has vowed to punish international students who participated in pro-Palestine speech. Ayanna Legros’s “Mother of the Protest Movement” (2025) (photo courtesy Ayanna Legros)Legros, a mixed-media artist who grew up near Columbia’s campus, exhibited a work in tribute to Noor Abdalla, the wife of Mahmoud Khalil, whose arrest and detention under the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security triggered mass protests. Abdalla gave birth to the couple’s son while Khalil, then a student at Columbia, was held in an immigration detention center in Louisiana. “I was thinking about [Mahmoud’s] wife,” Legros said, describing her work. “I was thinking historically about women and the wives of people in social movements.” Inspired by Haitian artistic groups and traditions, such as Atis Rezistans and the Movement Saint-Soleil, Legros created a bottle sculpture decorated with Abdallah’s likeness and the Syrian flag, titled “Mother of the Protest Movement” (2025).“Everyone knew that seeing a pregnant woman endure this was horrific, but it’s such a different experience when you have to think about somebody waking up and going to court, writing a full testimony,” Legros said. Ranzer’s rebuttal to an article in the Free Press was on display as part of the Hind’s House art exhibit.Artist and designer Meryl Ranzer, who participated in last year’s Hind’s House, brought with her a selection of interpretive self-portraits created daily since October 7, 2023. Her more recent works, mounted on Recirculation’s walls, say “abolish ICE” and “free Palestine.” “I thought it was important to make sure we talk about the interconnectedness of all these struggles,” Ranzer said. Vendors sold prints and reproductions by artists in Gaza, including illustrations of cats made by two sisters, Rahaf and Anfal, who told Hyperallergic in a WhatsApp message that they are located in the Al-Nuseirat camp in Gaza. The sisters said they commission custom cat portraits through the Instagram account Meow-mento Designs. The three-day event unfolded as a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took hold.“It’s the beginning, in a lot of ways, of rebuilding and not allowing governments to whitewash what they did,” Razner said. “Accountability is important, and so I think events like this that keep reminding people and putting the Palestinians, the people of Gaza, at the front of mind are important.” Vendors sold prints and reproductions by artists in Gaza.Razner’s daily self-portraits