How can we develop an approach to teaching in higher education that at once offers the
possibility of (decolonial) dialogues across knowledge systems and artful expression through
the tactile act of zine-making? This question guides the critical dialogue about a research
project on teaching sustainability through traditional proverbs from Malaysia and Kazakhstan
within a zine-making workshop in a UK university. Merging our reflections with that of
students and their zine artworks alongside traditional proverbs, we dialogue across the
related tensions associated with challenges of interpretation and appropriation of proverbs
for intercultural learning as well as the politics and pedagogy of zine-making. Through these
tensions which reveal the messy, ambivalent, and unsettled practices within the neoliberal
university, we offer a model and a set of considerations for researchers and teachers
engaging in decolonial and arts-based praxis.