Her Blueprint: The Global Fund for Women Blog

Born in Iran Western Azerbaijan, Azar Emdad now lives and works in South Yorkshire, UK. She obtained her BA in Multi-disciplinary Design specializing in Photography at Staffordshire Polytechnic in 1989. In 1990, she was commissioned to document the war with Armenia in Soviet Azerbaijan. This extremely sensitive and important work was published internationally in many journals. In 1996, Emdad completed a postgraduate course in Gender Studies at Sheffield Hallam University, where she majored in Women in Film.

Azar's engagement is with art-based concerns, with particular emphasis on social, political, and gender issues. Her works have been widely exhibited both in the UK and internationally, including a solo show at the World Cultural House Berlin, the Silk Road Gallery in Tehran, Iran, the Homeland Society in Baku, North Azerbaijan along with UK-based group shows, including Stoke-on-Trent Museum, St. David Hall Cardiff, the Rose Issa Project, and many more. Azar’s work has been collected by many private collectors, including the Salsali Private Museum Dubai.

Dinner in Tehran is a series of 12 images, inspired by Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of The Last Supper. These images explore the various paradoxes that exist within Iranian society today; the issue of public and private personas, the fractured identities, censorship, religion and strict social codes, which result in many Iranians living a double life.

All 12 images show the same woman center stage, putting the role of a woman at the heart of Iranian society. In each image, the table is properly set and the food is plentiful as it plays a fundamental role in Iranian society, joining people together on a daily basis. These images are of young actors, professional models, friends and family members. Using the perspective of an Iranian woman living in the West, Azar Emdadi reexamines and questions representations of Islamic identity.

Q: You were born in Iran but you are living in the UK. How much and in which ways do these opposite cultures mark your works?
A: Being an Iranian living in the West, I feel myself curiously ‘bound’ equally to both. It is as if being caught between the divergent cultures of both East and West have somehow re-‘molded’ my perspectives, allowing me to appreciate and understand them in new ways. Because of this, I find myself politically, psychologically and emotionally torn. So much so, that even time spent in either sphere is physically disorienting. This continual conflict within my life has shaped – and continues to – my character and personality. Being centered from within, my principles and values clearly reflect these influential conflictions externally through my work.

Q: What does it mean for you to take a tradition and use it – is this just an endorsement or are you doing something else with it – something unexpected?
A: Contemporary art today explores ideas, concepts, questions, and practices that examine the past. This means using tradition as a vehicle, a visual platform to describe the present, and imagine the future. Often this helps to understand the underlying questions one is trying to answer and the ideology, or label it is subject to. Contemporary art can often seem overwhelming, difficult, or so simple that the viewer might wonder if they are missing something. Sometimes to understand where the behavior comes from, it is necessary to study the values and beliefs of the traditions that underpin them. It is an intensely personal undertaking for any artist to look into their own traditions to seek understanding. So, for myself, I see what is happening today in my homeland, and I ask why certain traditions are disappearing and how these experiences have an impact on how Iranians see themselves on the world stage. It is hard to realise that, because of this, many younger Iranians are losing interest in their own culture and heritage.

Q: Why do you define yourself as an artist? And what is the role that art has in your everyday life?
A: An artist is someone who connects to others emotionally through various media relevant to their creative practice in order to give them pause, to capture the attention of others through word, image, color and sound. I see myself exploring these media in order to grow both technically and emotionally, thereby evolving on a daily basis within the new technology to create dialogue. Art enabled me to find myself and at the same time lose myself; art has helped me transit the displacement process. I owe it to my art practice to continue and to establish a dialogue that is more of a universal language.

Q: Can women do everything?
A: Throughout history women have proven they are capable of doing and partaking in many professions, undertaking a variety of jobs very well indeed. Of course they may be subject to physical restrictions on certain heavy jobs. But this is not a sufficient hindrance to prevent women becoming active members of society and effective role models for the future generations. Today the younger generations of women are striving to perfect themselves. In most underdeveloped countries more girls are able to enroll in schools than ever before, but still women are paid so little compared to men, so that they are frequently dependent on men for their survival. We need to remove a fixed set of expectations, a false objective in that, simply speaking, because we feel we can do anything, we feel we have to do everything.

Q: How doesDinner in Tehran explore the extant paradoxes prevalent in Iranian society right now?
A:Dinner in Tehran focuses on the desire of many Iranians, especially the young, to free themselves from the social and cultural conditioning of a strict society. The images in Dinner in Tehran explore those subcultures that undermine and subvert their strictures and balk against the autocratic confines apparent in Iran today. I refer in particular to those trafficking in sanctioned banned goods on market stalls, such as medicines, Barbie dolls, dollars and euros. We see older women meeting together to share photographs and to discuss their memories of children no longer with them, who have emigrated. We see women artists, whose works explores their political and social position as women in Iran today. As consequence of this bravery, they are putting themselves at great personal risk, frequently being imprisoned for voicing their creativity.

Q: Why did you choose to use a globally known masterpiece such as The Last Supper? Why did you choose a Western icon?
A: The Last Supper was chosen precisely because it is globally known; and as a universal image its message is immediately understood. This iconic motif – Christ’s Last Supper – I discovered in the house of a friend of my mother, and both women are in their late 70s. One of them is Christian and the other a Muslim. Without any awareness of the narrative behind the image, the Muslim lady loved the image, purely from the emotive beauty it raised within her. From this I developed the idea of using a Western icon within an Iranian setting to create an image of the time and historical period depicted in the painting. It served as the perfect base from which to build a universal message, not bound by culture, fulfilling my own impression of Iranian society in the here and now.

Q: In what way does Dinner in Tehran represent Iranian society?
A: My work takes into consideration all those layers within Iranian society, breaking these layers down. It depicts the older generation in addition to the younger generation. Many young Iranians wish to represent themselves; they want to be in control of their own identity and to express themselves creatively through fashion, art and youth culture. My images expose all these layers and the paradoxical Iran of today in order to reveal it as it stands.

Q: All the human figures are depicted around a table, talking in groups of three, with their bodies, gestures and their facial expressions half-hidden by the table. Who are those people? And which roles do they play in society?
A: They are young people under the age of 30, who constitute the largest demographic group in Iran (young fashionable women, young men and children), older mothers, intellectual women and street market holders. They represent all walks of life. Even soldiers who fought in the war with Iraq who are now in their late 40s are represented by real figures. Soldiers that were involved in the war against Iraq have brought their memorabilia from the war. I depict mothers whose children left home and who, even in their country of Iran, live a lonely life. Children are brought up with mixed messages at nursery; young boys and girls with plastic surgery and heavy make-up, and finally, intellectual woman fighting for their beliefs.

Q: Do you think judgment is part of your culture/religion?
A: Yes, it is a tragic element that pervades our culture to be judgmental. But that does not mean that I agree with it or practice it, it’s wrong according to my own system of morality to pass judgment on another human being.
There is a famous wisdom verse within the bible, attributed to Jesus Christ and oft quoted being quite well known today, by which I place my own credo of live upon, it is: “Judge not, lest you be judged.”

Q: The woman in the centre of your photos is always the same, holding this same position. Who does this woman represent?

A: All 12 images have the same woman centre stage, representing women’s place at the heart of society, keeping the fabric of Iranian life together. I drew on autobiographical experiences for this central image.

The images in the Dinner in Tehran series are numbered 01 to 12. My numbering of the photographs relates to the subtle finger counting that the central female figure is doing in every image.

She represents the mother, sister, wife and hard working woman of Iran who has kept the family together in the last 30 years during the revolution, throughout war and sanctions, etc... She is always composed and calm, sitting in the middle counting her fingers gently. I like to leave it to my viewer to interpret the counting however they like.

Q: In the last photos there are only doves. Why? Is because they represent peace and freedom and is this what you wish for your country?

A: I created 12 images for the number of people on both sides of the table, in ten of those images; a table is surrounded by all 12 people on the same side as that of the middle woman. Finally, in one image only there is one person, and in the last image, with no one but doves.
The images of doves represent intellectual freedom and hope, the escaping of social norms, and the creation of new landscapes for Iranians to possess.

Dinner in Tehran (2012) was exhibited as a solo show in Tehran Silk Road Gallery (Iran), part of it in the London-based Rose Issa Project, and at Art Space London and Art13 London. The last exhibition was held inMay 2013 at the Dubai Art Space Gallery.

The Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago

Recently, I visited the Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago for an exhibit, The Way of Shovel: Art as Archaeology. The show offers various artists’ creative takes and appropriations on subject of archaeology. The exhibit peaks my interest because of the concept of crossover of art, archaeology, and educational inquiry. It includes audio recordings of our own curator at the Oriental Institute, where I currently work, discussing interpretations of the “real” archaeologist on the selected topics brought up in the exhibit. What was most fascinating to me is how contemporary artists have taken archaeology as a metaphor and method of inquiry on issues relating to philosophy, politics, and activism. At the beginning of 2014, I want to use this exhibit to reflect upon what I have learned from the field of archaeology as a museum educator in the past year.

The earlier stages of the archeological process involve pre-field investigation, survey, and excavation. In The Way of Shovel exhibit, one of the artists, Derek Brunen, created a three-part installation, Plot (Tombstone 2013), which was presented in video, showing the artist digging his own grave in a cemetery located in his hometown. The artist uses the tool – the shovel – as a metaphor in engaging greater philosophical questions about the meaning of life, death, labor, fate, and the relationship between self and the world. When seeing the video of the artist’s performative, repetitive, and meditative movements of digging, I thought of it as a manifestation of life as a perpetual process of learning and making connection with our world. We learn through questioning, doing, and digging deeper, then repeating this.


Michael Rakowitz, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist, 2013. The Museum of Contemporary Art.

In the other room, Michael Rakowitz’s The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist is a collection of re-created sculptural statues made of Middle Eastern product packaging materials. These objects represent the lost artifacts due to the US-Iraq war in 2003. The artist’s work delivers ironies through the idea of opposites – through the playfulness of the images of the materials used, it reinforces the seriousness of the political-diplomatic issues that were being dealt with; and through the use of modern packaging materials on the objects, it also reminded me of the vulnerability of the world ancient cultural heritage in light of warfare.

In 2013, I had written two posts relating my exploration of archaeology: From Art to Archaeology and Encountering a Mover-Shaker: Gertrude Bell. In this new year, I look forward to sharing more on my journey exploring the archaeology – perhaps like the archaeologists exploring and excavating their field, and maybe like the artists “shoveling” our history. As a museum educator, our museum collection will be my fieldwork where I can discover ways to engage our audience such as families, students, teachers, and the public, and help facilitate your inquiries about our history.

The Urge to Merge, acrylic and fabric on canvas, 2011

Migrating to a new land and finding herself at a crucial crossroads in her life led to Chicago-based artist of Indian origin, Chandrika Marla to transition into the art world six years ago. A graduate of the distinguished Indian fashion school, National Institute of Fashion and Technology (NIFT), she was a former fashion designer for a Delhi export company. “I moved to States in 1998 when I got married and subsequently, began designing clothes for Disney,” Chandrika says. While she enjoyed the experience, she mentions that having to leave Disney actually proved to be a blessing in disguise.

Having sporadically painted before, she utilized the time to hone her own painting technique under the tutelage of a local French artist. Eventually, she decided to embrace art, leaving fashion behind. “Fashion and art was getting muddled up in my head...in fashion, one is always designing for the consumer and validation is based upon if a collection sold well,” she says, remarking that becoming an artist allowed her to experience a great surge of liberation and creativity.

Excluded, acrylic and oil pastel, 2009

Having been immersed in fashion for so long, Chandrika's hand would instinctively move to the familiar rhythms of sketching the female body. “I don't have a pronounced sense of realism, I am more interested in delineating humanistic figures,” she says, mentioning that the figures populating her paintings nowadays are increasingly becoming more and more anthropomorphic over time, vague and blurred in contrast to her earlier works depicting sharply defined figures.

Chandrika's art produces several questions about being an immigrant/artist, especially in context to personal preoccupations of creating and writing about one's homeland while living away from it. For an immigrant artist, how much does their motherland influence their work (in Chandrika's case, India)? Is she intent on presenting herself as an essentially Indian artist through the basis of her work or do her roots play only a subliminal role in shaping it? Overall, is it imperative that one's immigrant identity always define one's artistic work?

Summer Fragment, acrylic, oil-pastel, and pigment on canvas, 2013

Both as a relic of her previous fashion designer avatar as well as a signature trademark, Chandrika incorporates fabric as an additional layer in her pieces to create a palimpsest of preexisting acrylics, oils, and pastels. In Sudha, for example, she cuts up a table-cloth and places it on the painting as how one would sew the pieces together, explaining, “It was like jigsawing a puzzle together.”

As India possesses incredible textile wealth, Chandrika has vast choices to feature in her work. (One example is Rajasthani block-print.) She explores fabric as means to interrogate the role of clothes in the facades that one presents to the world. In Urge to Merge (pictured first), three fabric bodices dance in a dialogue of sorts against a backdrop of warm, meditative red. Chandrika's works essentially concern themselves with the politics of relationships between women and the fabric, with paint converging to convey the layers nested inside these relationships.

Sudha, acrylic, oil pastel and block-printed fabric on canvas, 2010

“Whether its the politics of exclusion or inclusion or depicting cliquehood or facilitating the network of sisterhood, I am primarily interested in exploring a theme which has universal resonance,” she says. This makes one wonder whether the artist has moved away from her homeland, both in literal and artistic terms?

Echoing many immigrants' dilemma, Chandrika wrestles with both the notion of going home and defining what "home" represents to her. “Chicago definitely has become my home now...India no longer is, it's challenging to deal with in several aspects,” she honestly says.

Similarly, in regard to her art, India does not prominently figure on her mind or manifest itself in her paintings. “If placed in an anonymous context, would my work come out as Indian? The iridescent sense of color and fabrics may be rooted in India...however, I feel that the work itself should primarily be the focus, rather than its context,” she concludes.

Read and view more of Chandrika's work here.

Q: Blood and nudity seem to be a leitmotif of your work. Why? And what is your relation with them?  
A: I have created many artworks that deal with nudity but only a few that include blood. Many things motivate the direction of my work. I am interested in the vital cycles and the passage of time. I am interested in the body as an intimate territory: a map of registered memories that are not always in line with what religion, science and socioeconomic interests have led us to believe. How I relate to nudity and blood is a mirror of my fascination with life. I am accepting of my changing body, amazed with how my children grow and intrigued by the aging process. I have enjoyed my pregnancies and have had joyful, intense home births. The blood and nudity seen within the context of my artwork is linked to authenticity and undiluted sensuality.

Q: Identity is a repetitive theme in your work. Has identity become so important since you are an Argentinian living in Europe? Is it a need to find and define (or re-define) yourself?  
A:  I have lived half of my life away from my family and country of origin as an immigrant on two continents. These experiences have influenced my interest in Identity. In other projects, I do not focus so much on nationality as an identifying factor but in those experiences that we live that permeate us and determine the way we see the world.

Q: Female nudity… Is it a sort of re-appropriation of the female figure?
A: Yes. In my artwork I intend to go beyond the physical and aesthetic re-appropriation. My intention when photographing female nudity is also to re-vindicate the right to openly share experiences and add to the collective imagery. Love and sex among the elderly, orgasmic births, scars that leave testimony of a survived experience, all these have something to contribute to our common reality.

Q: It is obvious to me to link Canova’s Le Tre Grazie with your Tres Gracias Sangrantes. What does it mean for you to take a tradition and use it? Is this just an endorsement or are you doing something else with it?  
A: Tres Gracias Sangrantes was conceived as a parody to Canova´s Le Tre Grazie which are supposed to represent beauty, charm and joy and preceded banquets for the mere purpose of delighting the guests of the gods. Raphael created a chaste version of the piece and Rubens painted the Graces in a voluptuous and exuberant way. I wanted to add an irreverent image to the vast voyeuristic and salacious representations in Art.

The advertising industry tries to convince us that women´s blood is blue, that menstrual cycles stink, that menstrual pain is normal and should be medically numbed, and that mood swings are part of a syndrome (PMS) which is treatable by a huge range of pharmaceutical solutions. External control over women´s physiology and psychology reach debates about abortion legality and illegality, backs up the endless interventions on pregnancy and birth which ends up in an incredibly high rate on C-sections in most of the developed countries.  The external manipulation of women´s hormones sometimes starts in the beginning of adolescence.  The devalorization of old age sends more and more women in an anguished and frustrating search for eternal youth.  In Three Bleeding Graces I give visibility to blood in order to denounce the devitalization, domestication and exploitation of this process that negates women.

Q: Is HISTOLOGÍAS a metaphor for the lack of empathy toward others?
A: HISTOLOGIAS proposes getting into someone else´s skin and alludes to the complexity of this act. I present the skin as a canvas which is both influenced by the life that marks us from the outside (aging, illness, aesthetic, etc.) as well as the marks that come from the inside (the subconscious that overflows, explodes and stains).  There are moments in life when it becomes almost unbearable to fit inside the boundaries that conform who we are, those are the moments when we are able to grow emotionally and expand our limits.

Q: ALQUIMIA seems a spiritual work where the absence becomes presence. Would you tell me more about this work?
A: I created this series of photographs and sculptures soon after the death of my sister Bany. We were very alike and very close. We would laugh at the same things, we had the same smile. When she passed away unexpectedly from cancer I could not accept that she was gone. I was searching to be with her in a tangible way as an intent of transcending her absence. I brought her back into my life by creating this collaborative work. I based the artwork on her poetry, which I even embroidered on the dresses that I used for the series. 

Q: I found El nacimiento de mi Hija (The Birth of my Daughter) the most "transgressive" of your works. How do people respond to this work?
A: There are people who admire the work and appreciate my motivations for creating and sharing these self-portraits. Art history, Hollywood, the media and the advertising industry show maternities from a viewpoint which mostly corresponds to a heterosexual masculine fantasy. Everything related to the mother is portrayed as sacred, virginal and aseptic.

Other people are horrified by seeing a naked woman giving birth, smiling and showing the baby, umbilical cord, placenta and blood. Some feel it is not a “sincere” image of birth because their accepted version of women birthing involves pain, being out of control and needing guidance and assistance. They feel confronted by an image that challenges their most profound beliefs.  For me, experiencing birth without interference was always an incredible and powerful event. A rite of passage that is transcendental and primordial. I know that my experience is similar to that of many women and I wonder why that experience was never portrayed before and hardly ever discussed.

Q: Why do you define yourself as an artist? And what is the role that art has in your everyday life?
A: Everyday I am talking, planning, thinking, avoiding, fed up with, enjoying, loving, hating, amazed by, bored by, getting hope from and creating Art.  My artwork is a way of processing some of the most meaningful experiences that I have encountered: birth, illness, displacement, death… I can't separate art from my daily life. My husband, Jorge Rodríguez-Gerada, is also an artist and we have three children who love to be involved in our projects. Discussing concepts, learning and working in an organic and combined manner can happen at the dinner table or keep us busy for weeks.

Q: Can women do everything?
A: Yes, if you are comparing women´s ability to men, women have already shown that they are as capable as men to execute the most physical and intellectually demanding jobs as well as also being capable of the same ability for error. The problem is that they should not be doing everything.

During approximately the last sixty years, women have been struggling to do everything because that was another expectation that society had placed on them. Women became an active part of the workforce but kept the initial role of taking care of the household. For many women is an overwhelming amount of responsibility.  To add to all these, the societal pressures of doing it all, doing it happy and doing it while being young and beautiful had made of women incredible consumers, making huge profits by fomenting insecurities.  It is great to know that we can do everything we want but we need to free ourselves from the external pressures of doing it all.

Q: What do you want to achieve or demonstrate with your art?
A: I like to make visible experiences that did not have much exposure, that for different reasons were not sufficiently recognized, accepted or validated. I am amazed by the richness and variety of human experience and I do not want to conform to a narrow and limited version.

Q: How men react to your work? Does this vary by class, by culture, by ethnicity?
A: Most men give support to my artwork regardless of their background. I have received some negative feedback from both men and women who do not feel comfortable with how I portray nudity because it does not coincide with their “ideal” of what “beauty” is. I do not strive to show “beauty” in nudity because I do not believe that art must be beautiful. I want to go beyond the aesthetic and if you find it beautiful or troubling it is because of your perception.  Regarding the self-portrait Birth of my Daughter specifically, some people made commentaries comparing the vulgarity of these birth images to the vulgarity of photographing someone defecating. I am not offended by these comments because I know it is an indicator of how these people were raised and that their belief system connects these natural processes to being sinful or dirty. This is an indicator of the lack of respect that women´s bodies have and it is worrisome reality that this is the value that some people give to birth, breastfeeding, infancy and other natural things in life in general.

Q: Do you consider yourself a feminist?
A:  I embrace the value, uniqueness and equality of every person and that is for me what feminism stands for. I wish there was another word that would not have a gender connotation to oppose to the concept of Patriarchy. As with any other label used to gather many people with similar ideas, there are different ways to understand feminism and the nuances of what feminism is, is easily lost within this broad label. There are some feminists that do not appreciate my focus on maternity because they have been trying to conquer other roles for women to occupy and talking about motherhood seems like a step backwards to them. But for most of the women alive today motherhood is a reality. My work is created in order to counteract the predominant over medicated and detached view of maternity. 

Q: Can art change the way we perceive our life?
A: Once all essential necessities such as food, health and shelter are guaranteed, art can have an amazing impact on our lives. It can influence thought, provoke dialogue and question all facets of existence: from politics to education, from religion to entertainment. Art has a way of transforming ideas into emotions and that has the potential of awakening society from indifference and indoctrination.

Credit: International Network of Liberal Women

In recent weeks, Human Rights Watch and Bill Gates released two reports on global poverty and the most pressing rights struggles of 2013. In Davos, some of the highest-earning and most powerful leaders of the world convened for the World Economic Forum.

Yet, as I live my life here in Paris, having completed a Master's degree focusing on human rights at the end of last year while at the same time undergoing a heart surgery, I contemplate what human rights means to me personally versus others. How much overlap is there between developing versus developed nations? How can I fully live within and access my own rights in a country that is not even my own? What I have come up with as I train in the park near my pink cottage, sending resume after resume, networking, flying to Rome to be with my French boyfriend who works for the United Nations and is also seeking long-term employment in his own country, trying to build the rest of a dream after significant resiliency most of my life, is how blurred the line is between those in need of accessing and fully realizing human rights standards. These are the people I love, live near, and work alongside.

The past few days the American news has been shaped by an announcement that AOL had reversed a decision regarding 401ks to its employees after a media frenzy regarding CEO Tim Armstrong's comment that,

Two things that happened in 2012. We had two AOL-ers that had distressed babies that were born that we paid a million dollars each to make sure those babies were OK in general. And those are the things that add up into our benefits cost. So when we had the final decision about what benefits to cut because of the increased healthcare costs, we made the decision, and I made the decision, to basically change the 401(k) plan.

The mother of the "distressed baby," Novelist Deanna Fei, published an eloquent and very brave response to her husband's employer in Slate magazine. Her husband, Peter S. Goodman, is the Executive Business and and Global News Editor of AOL's Huffington Post. The Goodmans are known to me because Arnold and Elise Goodman, the grandparents of the "distressed baby" girl, were the couple who gave me very my first job in publishing when I was nineteen years old. I worked from their home as their Literary Agency Assistant, and the position was a lifelong dream for this rural girl from a chaotic childhood with little resources earning and financing my undergraduate degree in Manhattan. I filed their contracts, letters to their children, answered their phone calls from the authors of the What to Expect When You're Expecting series, sent out rejection letters, and learned about publishing from two people who had made a wonderful life from it. They had a beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, two wonderful children, and to my young eyes they were living the good life.

Enter the life of their own grandchild. As an advocate for children's health, I was aghast reading the AOL CEO's comment but was not surprised. The state of healthcare in my own country is one of the most brutal abuses of rights in a wealthy and developed nation that exists. So is the cost of education. Enter where I live currently so as to actually complete a Master's degree before I turned 35. When I had my heart surgery last year, I was also a student who paid nothing to have that surgery. I had suffered from supraventricular tachycardia since I was seventeen years old but still went on to race ultramarathons and build running teams in support of women and children's health. But around the end of 2012, as my hormones shifted and I worked freelance while earning my degree and trained teams of ex-pat runners, I began to have heart episodes much more frequently. When my sisters' were visiting me last March and I looked up at my baby sister's worried face sprawled on a Parisian sidewalk in full-on tachycardia, I began to think the time had come to fix my heart. Then I read online that when I am pregnant someday my baby would also go without oxygen and experience the same horrendous effects I did when the tachycardia occurred plus it could affect the child's development; I knew it was time to have heart surgery.

I made an appointment with a cardiologist, my school's health assistant, and within a few months (and incredible work), I had my heart surgery scheduled for the day I was supposed to have walked the stage for my biggest dream, my graduate degree. Again, I paid nothing for my surgery. I was a freelancing student who paid nothing for my heart surgery, Americans. And, things went wrong on the table. They found the problem of my heart to be very, very rare because it was located in the core of my heart not on the outside of it, making the procedure much more risky and longer than had previously thought, and, of course, more expensive. Still, lying on that table my only worry was whether or not I would end up with a pacemaker as a 34 year-old endurance athlete. Money was not a concern, because I knew that I would pay nothing, in spite of my condition being worse than ever diagnosed. Not every part of the French health system process was easy or the procedure seamless, but my heart is healthier than ever before.

In 2011, I worked at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health for an international public health project funded by USAID. I ran Comrades 2010 and 2011, with a heart problem, advocating for women and children's health and went on to do my Master's focusing on public policy and international law. I studied at Oxford University one month after my heart surgery where my sole focus was on my health and my studies, not on any doctor's bills. I wish I could say the same for my younger sister's father who almost died when hundreds of blood clots filled his body, and remains in debt two years later in spite of having health insurance at the time.

The Goodmans' story of fighting for their daughter's life is not an exceptional case among examples of American healthcare system failures. But, they are not the perceived "other" either. They are a family living in a developed nation with healthcare and yet they are still struggling to access basic rights. They are not the ravaged women of Congo who deserve safety from rampant rape. Or the dying children in Syria whose lives are mutilated by the war that Peter Goodman wrote about from Davos. They are just two parents who had the resources to tell their story about how challenging it has become to access healthcare and to force quick change to horrendous corporate policy. And, the baby girl's father happened to be born from the parents of the very people who gave me my first chance a long time ago.

We are all in some way or shape attempting to live our lives with dignity and with access to our basic human rights. Their story--all of the stories I read and write about woman, children, and families all over the world trying to do the same--strengthen my belief in what is our global community. And, it proves that everyone, everywhere deserves to live and access universal human rights. Because there is no "other." There is only us.

When you hear the word "illustration," what does it conjure for you? For four Indian women illustrators -- Kalyani Ganapathy, Bakula Nayak, Shreyas R Krishnan, and Trusha Sawant -- illustration produces a host of associations for each artist. The meshing of these individual visions has resulted in them forming a collective, which exhibited its first edition, My Cup of Tea last October at Kynkyny Art Gallery, Bangalore, India.

What was the story behind the formation of the collective? When Kalyani Ganapathy decided to become a full-time illustrator, she had the idea for an illustrator's collective; what she awaited was the right people and time for it to assume shape. Meanwhile, unknown to her, Kalyani's illustrations had motivated brand strategist and packaging designer Bakula Nayak to return to illustration after many years. Their first meeting over a cup of tea set the ball rolling for the collective. Kalyani then wrote to her long-time friend Shreyas R Krishnan, also an illustrator, to ask her to the join the collective; Shreyas meanwhile had been collaborating on a sketch-book swap project with her colleague, Trusha Sawant. When the four finally met in person, they realized that between them they had varying styles and interests. However, what brought them together was their love for narrating through the drawn image. Over their discussions, the concept underlying the Illustrator's Collective grew into a space (literal and otherwise) for like-minded illustrators to come together and share common interests: it would also bring the practice of contemporary illustrations to a wider audience.

Here is a glimpse into each of these illustrators' works and individual mindscapes.

Kalyani Ganapathy

Sun kissed

"For me, illustration is a powerful medium of expression, both for self and others," says Kalyani, whose dreamy illustrations displayed in the exhibition consisted of the intriguingly titled, Memory Box, which she describes as a visual journey, a sensory experience from her recent travels. "I walk through life, observing everything in slow motion. I soak in everything around me and create a ‘curated’ memory box in my mind. I sit in my studio, open the box and allow the contents to spill out onto paper," she says. "Every time I put my brush on paper, it brought on so much nostalgia and emotion, reminding me of little moments in life."

Shreyas R Krishnan

Hidden in Plain Sight

Shreyas quotes the American graphic designer, Milton Glaser to aptly describe what drawing means to her: "The great benefit of drawing for instance, is when you look at something you see it for the first time…and you can spend your life without seeing anything…" She sees illustration as means to observe, document, experience and also, express. "My work usually revolves around culture and travel – both in live documentation drawing as well as finished illustrations. I connect with colors and tactility in visuals, objects and print ephemera; I look for textures and signs of a hand behind the art," she says. Her illustrations for the exhibition focused on a theme close to her heart: women's issues; in particular, she explored the notion of visibility and being hidden through the medium of veils in her works such as Hidden in Plain Sight. "Veils have a curious presence in a public space. Do they actually hide a woman or do they make her more conspicuous?" she questions.

Bakula Nayak

Onefish-twofish

Bakula finds romance in the world gone by. A hoarder of all things vintage, especially paper ephemera, she is on a constant quest to repurpose her vintage finds so they have life in a new context and can relive their glory. My Cup of Tea allows her to access the alternate world she inhabits and which she observes through multiple perspectives and lens: "in montages, sometimes in fast-forward or in slow motion." She seeks to breathe life into a forgotten piece of beauty by using a book of wallpaper samples circa 1931 as a canvas in her works such as in My cup of tea-Ohmy! The things I ﬁnd in it! "The gorgeously aged paper has vintage prints on one side and my pen and ink renderings on the other," she says of her work, which marries the past and contemporary through grace and beauty.

Trusha Sawant

Do I Dare Disturb the Universe

The fourth member of the collective, Trusha finds the world a bizarre place to inhabit. She loves visually curating the odd bits and bobs that surround her, knowing that there exists an aesthetic of the absurd. Her theme for the illustrations she created for the collective was how one notices things and consciously forgets. "My work, Out of the Blue is my interpretation of these abandoned spaces between observations and memories where the absurd resides," she says of her illustrations permeated by a distinct sense of whimsy.

Given the multiplicity of thoughts and techniques, was it challenging to produce collectively? "The forming of the collective and the decision to exhibit were simultaneous. The first challenge was the obvious one of how to present four different bodies of work as one show/collective. Since all of us were creating new pieces for our first show, we needed an overall theme which would allow us to display four different types of illustration work – My Cup of Tea was an idea that worked perfectly for this," Shreyas says.

Kalyani mentions that she loved the experience of sharing each piece with the collective as soon as it was done. "What I particularly love about the people I collaborated with was the space and freedom to create on paper without interference -- and still being able to work together to reach certain goals," she says. She feels that working in a collective is a joy, especially when there is "criticism that pushes you to strive on what works best for you. A collective is about shining individually and as a group."

Even a brief glance at the illustrators' works will reveal distinctly and excitingly different approaches, techniques, and themes. Yet what binds the artists and the works together is that of presenting a mosaic of stories, each part contributing to a vibrant larger whole.

Alicia D'Amico, born in Buenos Aires (1933-2001), was an Argentinian photographer. Camera in hand, she always preferred her photographs in black and white as well as the format of 35 mm.

Alicia graduated from the National School of Fine Arts as Professor of Drawing and Painting in 1953. In 1955, she was awarded a scholarship by the French government and lived in Paris for a year, which allowed her to improve her knowledge in Visual Arts and purchase her first camera.

Two years later, Alicia made her first photographic work thanks to studying and her father who was also a photographer; later, she become assistant to photographer Annemarie Heinrich. Along with Sara Facio, Alicia opened a studio in the 1960s and taught at the School of Photography in Argentina, where she was called "master" by her students.

Between 1983 and 1999, Argentina witnessed a critical mass of women artists emerge who organized exhibitions and events, and challenged the patriarchal discourse. In 1983, alongside the filmmaker Maria Luisa Bemberg, Alicia became cofounder of A Woman’s Place (Lugar de la Mujer). It was one of the first feminist institutions in Argentina to host interdisciplinary feminist activities. It was open to lesbian feminists too, who, in 1986, together with the photographer Ilse Foscova, organized public interventions in favor of women rights.

Alicia's photographic work focused on teaching and collaboration in books, especially with artists and intellectuals of South America such as Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Adolfo Bioy Casares, Julio Cortázar, Oscar Painter, Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Angel Asturias, Pablo Neruda, and Astor Piazzolla -- many of whom were the subject of her black-and-white portraits.

Julio Cortázar

Her work has been exhibited in many countries as part of group shows with other artists such as Pedro Luis Raota, Osvaldo Salzamendi Francisco Tenllado, Rubén Sotera, and Alicia Sanguinett but her work has held individual exhibitions worldwide as well. On August 30, 2001, Alicia died in her hometown of Bueno Aires but her photographs continue to enlighten.

María Luisa Bemberg

Jorge Luis Borges, 1963

In an inspired move to broaden global outreach and awareness for women's rights, we have merged with the Global Fund for Women.

To read more about this exciting news, read the full announcement and check out our FAQs. For the time being, IMOW is thrilled to share these details regarding the merger.

On Saturday, March 8, women and men around the globe celebrated International Women's Day in support of advancing women's human rights and to acknowledge their continued struggles. Around the world, women face myriad gender inequalities, one horrifying example of which is the use of rape as a weapon of war.

Spanish-artist May San Alberto explores such gender inequalities in her exhibitions, Artemisias and Albores XXI. A state-registered nurse but also a fine artist, May traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2011 to volunteer for a month in Congo's capital city of Kinshasa. However, she also arrived with an artistic project to photograph Congolese women in a stunning series of portraits reinterpreting the works of Artemisia Gentileschi, a female Italian Baroque painter and rape victim known for depicting women in states of suffering.

In a recent interview with Her Blueprint, May shared, "Artemisias is a project that reinterprets some works of Artemisia Gentileschi in order to serve as a reflective metaphor about the strength of women to overcome daily [strife] in any civilization at any time. It talks about women as everyday heroines."

Study on Minerva

To date, the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the most war-torn countries in Africa and is often referred to as the rape capitol of the world. The size of Western Europe, the country has been at war since 1998 with a death toll of 5.8 million people. Rape as a weapon of war is rampant in the DRC. Women Under Siege cites that every four minutes, five women are raped in Congo.

May went to Congo with the Artemisias project in her backpack. She explains why she used 17 of Artemisia's paintings and the Congolese women as models.

Artemisia Gentileschi was raped in Rome by a painter working in her father’s workshop. She reported the abuse and won the trial, although to do so she suffered humiliation and torture and became marked by the conservative society of her time. In spite of this, she had workshops in Florence, Rome, Naples and at the English Royal Court, obtaining great success and recognition throughout her life. After her death, history and historians ostracized her by attributing most of her artworks to other artists –for example, her father, Oracio Gentilleschi, or Caravaggio. She is nowadays considered as one of the most accomplished painters of her time, as well as an icon of a fighter and independent woman and one of the first female painters who lived from her artistic work.

Study Judith and Her Maid

More than 10 million people live in Kinshasa, yet May searched up until the last days she was to depart Congo for the women she photographed in Artemisias.

The women in the photographs are adults with a hard lifetime behind them, May says. Their country, for 25 years, [has been] the battleground of the deadliest war in modern African history. In this context, sexual abuse was largely used as a weapon of war and, still today, gender-based violence continues to be extremely worrying all over the country. Nevertheless, these are Congolese women who despite the armed conflicts, suffering humiliation and poverty are strong enough to look to the future and face the challenge of learning and teaching. All of them, except for the three teachers, are illiterate.

The single photo session lasted two hours, on September 28, 2011, and used only the clothing and furniture available in the school at that moment.

Study on Self Portrait As a Martyr

Empowering women who are abused and highlighting gender disparity run strong themes in May's work. Part of Albores XXI, both Lagrimas Negras and Airing Inequality also focus on gender equality. May shares that her work is taking on these subject matters to further the dialogue about women's roles and the built-in disparity created from gender alone.

Airing Inequality

She says, "Both in Albores XXI and in Artemisias, I wanted to talk about the situation of inequality women suffer in any country on our planet but without emphasizing the suffering but the power, knowledge and security that we will achieve equality. We are strong even though we are thought of as the weaker sex, we are free although we are badly treated, we are intelligent even if we haven't been to school, we are beautiful at any age, we look after our families, we work hard and enjoy life. We look to the future with optimism despite the inequalities and struggle hard every day for a better world."

Recently, Artmesias won the Celeste Prize and the Laguna Art Prize. It has also received prizes in the International Present Art Festival and has been exhibited in Shanghai and Rome. In 2014, some of the Artemisias' works will be exhibited in Venice and also in Milan.

Note:The artist would like to extend her thanks "to the women who took part in the Artemisias Project. It is thanks to the beauty, dignity and innate ability to perform of the women and men who participated in the photo shoot that this art project exists. It is also thanks to the school sisters, who opened the door of their home, their educational project and their life stories to me. I am kindly and sincerely grateful to all of them for their positivity in life and their generous engagement. Furthermore, to generally thank all the women who have helped me to do my artistic projects and…to thank the men too. They all know who they are."

Elana Rozenman (near far left) from Israel visits a URI leaders in India.

As the official blog overseer of the United Religions Initiative (URI), I search for stories and try to raise the voices of our interfaith activists as best I can. So, as a woman who deeply cares about peace building and women’s rights, my job can be hugely rewarding.

As most Her Blueprint readers are well aware, International Women’s Day (IWD) was celebrated around the world on March 8^th.

For me, it was a pure joy to learn about how this momentous occasion was interpreted and celebrated throughout the global URI network.

Our Cooperation Circles—that is, groups of seven or more that represent at least three different faiths or cultures—can be very progressive. Imagine people from every faith coming together to talk about the delicate state of the planet and how to become better stewards of the Earth—it happens everyday, somewhere within the URI network.

Now imagine women coming together for peace: Christians and Muslims in Pakistan, Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem—this also happens, but on an even larger, or at least more visible, scale on International Women’s Day.

The women of URI never need a reason to celebrate and unify for peace; however, IWD is a great way to mobilize a series of events on one day and under one unifying theme.

This year, the United Nation‘s official theme was “Equality for women is progress for all.” URI’s women leaders embraced this sentiment wholeheartedly. Here are a few snapshots of their events:

- Just south of Mumbai in Satara, India, hundreds of Hindu and Muslims women created Rangolis, or floor decorations, on the theme “Women they want to be.” A panel discussion was held on women’s roles in nation building through peace and communal harmony work.

-In Pakistan, Muslim, Christian, and Hindu women came together to receive dance and other performances by children with the theme of women’s empowerment. The female attendees spoke about the local Cooperation Circle WAKE (Women and Kids’ Education), and how its vocational training programs were empowering them to find better jobs.

-In the Great Lakes region of Africa, more specifically, Kampala, a panel discussion with roughly 50 women from very diverse faith backgrounds was held. The theme was “Inspired by my faith for positive social change.” Women were given a safe space to discuss workplace discrimination, domestic abuse, and the lack of rights to their children and in owning property.

-In Jerusalem, Israeli and Palestinian women came together to view Women of Cyprus, a documentary about Turkish and Greek women reconciling after the Cyprus conflict. Along with the Greek female parliamentarian who directed the film, a panel of Israeli and Palestinian women discussed the documentary’s relevance to their current situation.

At United Religions Initiative, our women leaders are finding common ground and common goals, elevating both the cause for peace and the cause of women’s equality every day.

As UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon recently said, "The evidence is clear: equality for women means progress for all."

Born in Chile in 1967, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra grew up under the dictatorship of General Pinochet. From this chapter of Chilean political history and her personal experiences, she developed personal work through a combination of elements that gave rise to non-linear narratives; they appear ecstatic, traumatic, and surreal all at once. Sexuality, popular culture, and death are recurring motifs in her works, which allude to melancholy dreams and apparitions creating and overlapping each other, interlacing a poetic achieved through an austerity of media.

These fictions -- created from a combination of real facts and memories confronted with elements drawn from popular culture, mythology, and literature -- form a tapestry of figures isolated that embody a richness of meanings. These are passages between the dreams and the evocation, where a web of ideas, associations, and hidden stories seem to envelop figures of a magic shape that avoid falling into the abyss.

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra produces drawings on small pieces of paper, employing color pencil and watercolors, followed by the application of a wax bath and a transparent film that provides protection and permanence to each piece. Her work is informed by film, fairy tales, and botanical and zoological textbooks.

Her drawing is concise and made from fluid lines that create personages on a neutral background. In this space, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra often writes words in Spanish, English, and German, with delicate touches of color that show a fragment of the narrative that enhance or complicate the iconography.

Her mysterious and intimate works suggest the influence of Surrealism, Dada, and Francisco Goya's phantasmagoria. The sober figures and the austere monochromatic of the composition reflect a language based on the texture pattern, typography, and the accumulation. Despite this, Sandra Vásquez de la Horra’s works are fully autonomous and have a very unique and clear sense of their own characteristics, compressing and inventing new territories.

Vásquez de la Horra’s work is part of various public and private collections. It has been exhibited at the Oldenburger Kunstverein, Germany (2012), the Musée d’Art Moderne, St-Etienne (2011), the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht (2010), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011, 2009), and the Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf (2008). The artist was awarded the prestigious Guerlain Prize in 2009. In 2012, she participated in “La Inminencia de las Poéticas” at the 30th São Paulo Biennial.

[Editor's Note:Very recently, Britain and Wales legalized same-sex marriage, allowing for couples to legally wed. In this special Her Blueprint blog post, Carrie James, a law student at George Washington University in Washington, DC looks at the way forward for LBG rights across Europe, specifically within the European Court of Human Rights.

Bio: Carrie R. James is a law student at The George Washington University Law School in Washington, DC, where she studies international law and international human rights law. She holds a master of arts degree in international affairs with a concentration in governance and rights from The New School University in New York City and bachelor's of fine arts in theatre from Long Island University. She specializes and is an activist in women's and queer people's rights. She spends her rare free time writing fiction with a very snuggly cat on her lap.]

Credit: Salon.com

While the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has ensured the protection of rights for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (“LGB”) people, their interpretation of laws to protect LGBs has lead to gaps, particularly in the area of parental rights.

Overview of the ECHR
The European Convention on Human Rights (the Convention) ensures protection of individual human rights as law, which are reviewed and decided by the ECHR. The Court provides individual relief as well as “determines issues on public-policy grounds in the common interest” in order to increase protection of human rights in Europe. Therefore, the Court's interpretation of a law has powerful human rights outcomes.

When the Court reviews laws pertaining to LGB people, Articles 8 and 14 are typically the provisions used. Article 8 protects an individual’s private and family life, allowing interference only to the extent required to secure “national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.” Article 14 prohibits discrimination according to the Convention. This means the Court considers different treatment of LGB persons to be discriminatory. Overall, sexual orientation discrimination requires a serious justification for any different treatment.

Previous Cases Involving LGB Parental Rights
The Court has considered several overarching LGB issues: criminalization of sodomy, housing discrimination, and parental rights via custody and adoption. At this time, the Convention does not guarantee a right for LGB people to adopt. In result, adoption issues involving LGB people have often arisen before the Court.

In Frette v. France, the Court determined that a denial of adoption to a single, gay man was not a violation of the Convention. The lack of scientific research coupled with the lack of international consensus regarding adoption by lesbians, gays, and bisexuals supported its conclusion. However, in E.B. and others v. France, the Court reversed Frette, finding that too much emphasis was placed on sexual orientation in denying the adoption, specifically the amount of focus given to the role her partner would play in the child’s life. The Court focused narrowly on the facts of this case rather than, as in Frette, broader public policy issues of allowing lesbians, gays, and bisexuals to adopt.

In Gas and Dubois, only married couples were allowed to access reproductive technologies in France. Because at the time same-sex couples were excluded from marriage, a lesbian couple went to Belgium in order for one partner to be inseminated. After the birth of their daughter, the couple sought a second parent adoption, which was denied because only married couples were permitted to adopt. The Court upheld the denial, because no unmarried couples (same or different sex) could access adoption. Therefore, the rights of the couple were not violated according to the Court's interpretation.

However, in X and others v. Austria, a woman sought a second parent adoption of her partner’s child from a previous relationship, the denial was found to be a violation. Unmarried, different-sex couples in Austria were permitted second parent adoptions.

ECHR’s Straight Gaze on Relational Rights
The ECHR’s approach to LGB issues is more likely to protect individual rights (private sex and succession) rights, rather than relational rights (parenting). In the cases I've discussed regarding adoption, the Court approaches the issue by engaging with the difference between heterosexuals and homosexuals or bisexuals. In more recent cases, the Court found a similarity between the groups first and analyzed the different treatment through a heterosexual lens (or the “straight gaze”). As can be seen in the French and Austrian second-parent adoption cases, the ability for LGB parents to secure legal protections of their families is entirely dependent on whether the State provides non-married, different-sex couples legal protections for their families.

By tagging parental rights to how heterosexuals access these rights, the Court fails to protect LGB rights to family. The simplest solution to these issues seems the requirement of same-sex marriage. However, the problem of approaching these rights from a heterosexual point of view would not be addressed, even if same-sex marriage was universally legal throughout Europe. Because the legal infrastructure is biased to the heterosexual, the ECHR should adjust what legally determines impermissible discrimination. Rather than looking narrowly at what the law provides for heterosexuals, the Court should look both narrowly and then more broadly at the legal infrastructure in which the discriminated party operates (in this case, the LGB person within Member States).

The Court should adjust its legal approach toward the discrimination of LGB rights, and focus on the difference between these groups and heterosexuals, rather than shoe-horning these rights into a heterosexual mold. This approach will help the Court to holistically take on issues of discrimination. It will also consider the broader infrastructure that affects LGB people and denies their rights under the Convention.

The result? Hopefully, better protection of human rights for everyone no matter their sexual orientation.

Weight of Dreams

Strong, elemental, and palpable, Neha Vedpathak's works derive inspiration from nature, rituals, and materials to produce thought-provoking installations; whether it's transforming handmade Japanese paper into delicate, exquisitely wrought objects or abstracting soil into soil mounds studding a wall, they invite viewers to pause and reflect by way of engagement. The interrogation, exploration, and manipulation of space also forms the central focus of Neha's work, compelling us to be more minutely aware of the dynamics and narratives of space.

Her Blueprint talked to Neha to find out more about her work.

Could you tell us about your background?

I'm from India. I was born in Pune, Maharashtra but moved around India quite a bit due to my father's job. I have been living in United States for seven years.

You were earlier working upon abstract paintings; however, you then decided to shift into installation art/three-dimensional art-work. How did you make and find this transition? Do you intend to return to abstract painting any time soon or are you now entirely focusing on installation art?

Yes, I was primarily a painter until late 2008; for many years I prolifically worked in two-dimensional art before feeling saturated. I then decided to expand my practice by moving onto three dimensional works; this transition was slow and difficult. I experimented a lot, trying to find a medium/material that aesthetically resonated with me and gave me conceptual satisfaction. As I wasn't a trained sculptor and didn't have access to many tools and equipment, I worked with what was available in my studio: acrylic polymer, handmade paper, mirrors, and wax. It was through this process of trial and error that I discovered plucking, which is a process I developed in where I separate the fibers of Japanese handmade paper using a tiny push-pin. I remember teasing the paper in this fashion and thinking, it's such a cool technique but there is no way I can make a complete body of work using this process, which is slow, meticulous and time-consuming. However, I went and accomplished exactly that, the results being witnessed at my N'Namdi Center for Contemporary Art, Miami exhibition held last year. There was and is something enthralling and satisfying about this process. As for painting, I did return to it in late 2011– early 2012 making only a few works but approaching it through my new materials: soil and paper. I have also been continually making drawings throughout this period and so maintaining a link to the flat surface via that.

Working with materials has obviously yielded many discoveries for you. Having earlier used hand-made Japanese paper in your paintings over the years, you now wrought exquisite, delicate lace-like objects through plucking. How did you end up working with Japanese paper and how would you describe your experiences?

My exposure to some of the most beautiful Japanese paper happened through a Japanese Canadian artist, a print-maker whom I met in India during during a residency program in 2005. She gifted me different kinds of Japanese papers. I loved them but didn't know what to do with them; after some time, I started collaging bits of paper into my paintings, still not contemplating too much about them. I nevertheless carried them with me through all the studios in India and States I worked in. It was only in 2009 that I approached paper and specifically, this Japanese handmade paper in a new light. It's interesting how this paper travelled and remained with me for 4 years before I was consumed by it. I would say my experience working with paper was gradual and organic. I knew I was attracted to it, not just in terms of its physical qualities but also its hand-made context as well as being aware of Japanese paper-making's rich history; however, it was a while before it assumed personal significance. I would like to believe that when I now approach this paper, it is laden with a deeper sense of understanding and regard, which arises from having forged an intimate history with it over the years.

Ritual is an elemental source of inspiration for you and you also state that you found the process of plucking as akin to slow-chanting (similar to a ritual or repeating a mantra), as heard in the video above. Could you elaborate more on what the processes of creating art means to you? What does art making mean to you?

That's a profound question. Honestly speaking, it means everything. Creating art is not just a career-choice: it's a way of life for me, my mode of questioning, learning, and understanding. I would not liken it to standardized religion. To me, it's more of a journey and exploration of myself and the world around me. As for the process of making art being ritualistic, I borrow from the practices of ''rituals'' and ''chanting'' which were a part of my upbringing in India.

Time

You have earlier wrought snow mounds and in your exhibition at N'Namdi Contemporary Gallery, you created a wall-installation studded with soil mounds [above]. You mention that these mounds bring together what is particularly significant to you: material, ritual, and nature. Having talked about the first two, could you elaborate on what nature means to you in context to the soil and snow mounds?

I have been in awe of nature as long as I can remember. Even as a child, flora and faunae, rocks, stars, and oceans constantly amazed me. I am intrigued by the constant duality that we find in nature: it's simplicity and complexity, strength and vulnerability, its benevolence and destruction and finally, it's essential adaptability. I have sought to mimic some of these aspects through my soil mound installation at N'Namdi Contemporary Gallery. Talking specifically about snow mounds and soil mounds, I started making them around the time that I had started missing and longing for my home country, India. The idea of physically touching the soil/snow and holding it felt valuable and meaningful; however, it was also complex and challenging working with it, snow and soil being natural elements were hard to manage.

The interrogation and exploration of space is a central motif of your work. How do you convey it through your installation art. Do you seek to make it a tangible thing or do you celebrate how significant it is despite its seeming invisibility?

I think the great thing about ''space'' is that it is present and active with or without one's intervention. But the question is: how do I address this space as an artist? ''Space'' is always a superset and I am extremely aware of this notion while creating art. I work employing a bit of both approaches which is for example, manipulation of the space and objects within it to make a viewer aware of ''that'' particular space, its expanse or limitation and sensations it creates. For the installation, "Time," I decided to build new corner walls in the gallery to create a continuity in that space in a very specific way. This installation is an example of choosing to change/modify the space to achieve a specifc effect. Other times, I allow the dynamics of space and objects to be more subtle; they are still complementing each other but in a more fluid fashion. "Marnay-sur-Seine" projection and "Snowmass" installation are good examples of that. The site of work also often dictates the approach.

Red

Red is a quirky installation which consists solely of red balloons, hand-cut mirror, and a chair [above]; it was developed as a site-responsive installation in a French art-center and direct response to the theme of Desire. What were your experiences that led to this site-specific installation? Was it a conscious decision to present a narrative based on so few objects?

Creating Red was a lot of fun. It was liberating to do something completely different other than my regular studio practice – and that's what's good about residencies. Red was an honest response to a specific coordinate of time and place that I inhabited and experienced: summer of 2011 and French countryside and the Seine river. I reference the emotion of desire in this work. The background story is that I had been wanting to visit France for a very long time; by the time it happened, my simple wish had transformed into a strong desire – and this is where it began. Another facet of desire is passion and it's universally known that French exude a real passion for life, whether its for wine, food, art or architecture. In this context, I started musing upon the idea of desire/passion and its iterations and – sometimes how fleeting they could be. I feel red balloons are symbolic of those fleeting emotions and desires. Red was created in a very tiny space, no bigger than a walk-in closet. It was really interesting working in that space. I like to work with economy of means. Balloons gave meaning, color,and lightness while the mirrors grounded the space. I needed the chair to compel the viewer to pause and meditate upon the installation. I thought it worked, no?

What are your future plans? Will you continue working with installation art and exploring the world of materials or do you wish to head in another direction?

I will continue to work with installation and sculpture for sometime at least; I feel I still have multiple possibilities to explore within this medium. I also recently relocated from Chicago to Phoenix, Arizona; it's been a huge transition, mentally and physically. I suspect this change in geography will inevitably seep into my work. I am currently exploring new ideas, trying to create new perceptions. It's hard to say what the future holds….

Find out more about Neha Vedpathak's work here.

Liliana Porter is an Argentinian artist (born, 1941) who has resided in New York since 1964.

Her works are storytelling based on fairy tales and children’s toys. Her oeuvre spans sculpture, photography, video, canvas, print, collage, and installation. Each sculpture is a particular world, a space where the conscious and the unconscious melt together. It is a narrative of imagination obtained by the assemblage of sculptures with small-scale objects, figurines, and utensils -- all part of a collection Porter has accumulated throughout the years.

These objects rarely appear together, they pose always alone; the character appears static in an empty visual field, and if they do engage in a dialogue, they do so with an object of a different species. Each element is distinguished by its discreet fragility, by a thin line between the everlasting and the transitory, where the exercises and the repetition of certain manual gestures constitute the essence of her work. These works, by mean of their small scale, allude to a human being's solitude, highlighting the duration of time and remarking on the importance of space. The issue of solitude is, in fact, Porter’s central theme.

The more perfect the void in which the character is placed, the smaller the object is in relation to its background. Indeed, the small figure contrasts with the vastness of the space. This contrast gives rise to a temporal notion associated to the finite and the infinite, to the vast and the minute.

Thanks to the distortion of the toys into painting and photographs, Porter creates new fictions, which are a fragile narrative exposed to transformations. Porter’s world is timeless, the artwork embodies itself in multiple reflections, as a place of changing point of view as well as an historical space irremediably incomplete that is progressively the subject of new readings. As such, each work assumes an extensive temporal meaning.

Through transformation and enrichment, Liliana Porter combines two parallel languages that allow the opening of a hermetic dialogue toward more complex and multidisciplinary fields, in which the text formulates new ways regarding the pre-established discourse posed by the images themselves.

I Am A Saudi Citizen, silver gelatin print (2007)

Saudi Arabian conceptual artist, Manal al Dowayan works with photography and installation to present both personal and larger narratives; whether exploring the Saudi women's experience or abstracting personal stories, her photography and installations powerfully impact the viewers, inviting them to directly access the heart of her works and contemplate their essence. Having been included in numerous international exhibitions and participated in several residences, she communicates a multi-nuanced collective voice through her singular artistic one, which is embedded in her layered photographic series or enquiring, engaging interactive works.

Her Blueprint spoke to Manal to find out more about her journey.

What drew you to art in the first place? What is it that continues to compel you to create?

Well, I am not a writer. I am not a poet. I cannot compose music. I also do not paint. I found myself in the medium of photography and later on, in installation art that interacted with people and spaces.

Landscape of the Mind, mixed media on paper (2009)

How do you go about conceptualizing a project? What do you mine inspiration from: an anecdote, a dream, a conversation? Or is it a byproduct of an issue/concern that you've been feeling strongly about and meditating upon over the years and which finds its release in the form of the project?

The art I produce is usually a direct reflection of my life and the ups and downs that exist within it. So while you may find that my main focus is the Saudi women’s experience, some collections such as Landscapes of the Mind and And We Had No Shared Dreams see me exploring more personal subjects. The basis of my works is black and white photography but I recently have begun to introduce more layers to the photograph and the ideas behind it. These layers come in different forms such as silkscreen prints, collage, spray paint, and neon and LED lights.

Esmi: My Name, Mixed Media Large Scale Installation (2012)

You have invited women to actively participate and engage with your projects such as Esmi-My Name. How would you define their contribution to them? What do they make of it?

Creating platforms for expression is an exercise that I have explored in several of my projects. It is intensely rewarding to see a large gathering of women of different ages and backgrounds coming together for the purpose of artistic expression and making a collective social statement using culture as their medium of exchange. My participatory art projects have evolved organically from early days when I used to photograph my friends; this process later became the foundation for collective projects in which I invited hundreds of women to collaborate with me. In the participatory art works, Suspended Together and Esmi (My Name) I was searching for the group voice within my community while creating a platform for women to voice their opinion alongside my own. I have always found strength in the collective voice. The participants were also using social media to proudly share their participation, eventually encouraging women from around the world to virtually participate. I was energized by having a group of individuals interact with the artwork and contribute to the concept behind the work through their participation.

During the Esmi (My Name) project, many participants stayed on in the workshop room until we had turned off the lights and were closing the doors as they wanted the experience to last for as long as possible. The energy in these gatherings was profound and is very difficult to put into words.

Tree of Guardians (2013)

Moving to specific projects, could you please elaborate about the story behind Tree of Guardians?

My constant questioning of the state of disappearance led me to its counterbalance: the necessary act of preservation. In my previous works, I have explored the issues of preservation of a woman’s name (Esmi), incursions and limitation on the autonomy she traditionally enjoyed (Suspended Together), and the juxtaposition of her conventional representation in Arab society and the reality of her current professional identity and personal potential (I Am). In its fullest sense, however, the act of preservation must transcend the identity of the single, identifiable individual and encompass previous generations of unnamed and sometimes forgotten women that serve as the cultural and social roots for the hopes, dreams and aspirations of today’s women. Therefore, this sculptural installation is both a marker of the individual women that are named on the leaves and captured in the oral histories and a celebration of the many generations of unnamed women who served as the protectors and messengers of authenticity. Suspended Together is a powerful installation that gives the impression of movement and freedom. However, a closer look at the 200 doves allows the viewer to realize that the doves are actually frozen and suspended with no hope of flight. If you examine it even more minutely, it shows that each dove carries on its body a permission document that allows a Saudi woman to travel. Notwithstanding their circumstances, all Saudi women are required to have this document, issued by their appointed male guardian.

How did you migrate into installation from photography? What was the experience of working on this installation and its overall impact?

Suspended Together is a large installation that was a culmination of multiple years working on the same subject. The dove made its first appearance in my artwork in 2009’s Landscapes of the Mind. Later, I captured them in flight around pieces made for And We Had No Shared Dreams collection in 2010. In Edge of Arabia: TERMINAL I, launched a three-dimensional dove. In all of these artworks, the doves symbolize the issue of movement and imposed guardianship on women in Saudi Arabia. All women in my country need a permission document to be issued by an appointed guardian when she needs to travel so I located this document upon the body of the doves. I asked many leading women from Saudi Arabia (scientists, educators, engineers, and artists) to donate their permission document to this project and the result was a flock of doves that appear to be in-flight but in reality they were suspended and not moving. This installation was a new experience for me and allowed me to explore a new, alternative way of expressing myself. Although the photograph remains the basis of my work, I enjoy experimenting with interesting mediums and techniques and enlarging the scope of my creative expression through installation. The State of Disappearance juxtaposes the ideas of preservation/disappearance and representation of Saudi women.

Unheard Sounds, archival photo paper on dibond with plexiglass lettering (2013)

When you make statements about gender through your projects, do you feel that you are radically pushing the envelope? What has been the response to your art in Saudi Arabia, as in terms of general feedback and more specifically, gendered responses?

Generally speaking, I don't observe or wait for the viewer's response. I start a conversation with my artwork and then walk out of the room, so to speak.

The notion of documenting the past and also, being mindful of appreciating how the past was constructed is obviously very important to you, as we can see in projects such as If I Forget You, Don't Forget Me. What significance does the project hold both in terms of a personal and larger national narrative?

The project was dedicated to the documentation of my late father's memory through the collective memory of his peers, both men and women. The project therefore holds huge emotional and sentimental significance to me. It was a very personal journey and the only link to the national narrative was that my father's generation was finally documented.

Find out more about Manal al Dowayan's work here.

Images courtesy Manal al Dowayan and Cuadro Fine Art Gallery.

Credit: Archives du Féminisme (Angers, France)

Mother’s Day celebrations have become a worldwide phenomenon. Even when political and economic situations are at their worst, we rejoice in celebrating mothers (and fathers too). And we reflect on the importance of a mother’s role and responsibilities.

In honor of Mother’s Day 2014, Clio shares with readers the words of a celebrated French women’s suffrage advocate, Cécile Kahn Brunschvicg (1877-1946). The longtime president of the Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes and a great philanthropist, Cécile Brunschvicg courageously sustained the campaign for the vote despite myriad setbacks. In 1919, after World War I and following the first positive vote on women’s suffrage in the Chamber of Deputies (which the Senate refused to consider), Cécile Brunschvicg posed the issue in terms of national honor: "It is humiliating to think that we are Frenchwomen, daughters of the land of the Revolution, and that in the year of grace 1919 we are still reduced to demanding the 'rights of woman'."

In 1936 Cécile Brunschvicg would gain fame as one of three women appointed by Léon Blum to his Popular Front ministerial cabinet (1936-1937). The remarks below date from 1933, the very year that Hitler came to power in neighboring Germany and unleashed a series of threats that would culminate not only in war in 1939 but also in the Nazi occupation of France in 1940. Brunschvicg’s observations about differing views of "the family" remain pertinent in many parts of the world today, as does her counsel on the importance of women’s development and participation in their communities as well as in their homes.

Brunschvicg’s tribute, "Mères, osez être" appeared in La Française, 27 May 1933. Translated by Karen Offen.

"Mothers, Dare to Be"

"Throughout the world Mother’s Day is celebrated, a touching idea that came to us from America, the great sentimental and practical country which is not merely content with recognizing the moral and social value of woman, but which, since many long years, has given her a place and an influence in its public life that increases every day.

"Some people in France are not afraid to affirm that the development of women’s role can only harm the family and they oppose what they call "the development of individualism" to the idea of the family.

"In reality we and they do not share the same understanding of the family.

"For them, the family is a small group entirely dominated by the authority of the father. In exchange for the bread he wins, he has the right to command as a master to the servant-wife and to the children, in whom he seeks more to develop blind submission than to develop their personalities.

"For us, on the contrary, the family is the union of two beings who share the same spiritual and intellectual ideal, who have decided to give life to healthy and happy children. The common household is the source of energy, the possibility to increase the radiance [rayonnement] of each by the free development of his or her own faculties.

"How is it possible not to understand that it is from the perfectioning of the individual that will give birth to the most perfect family and by what aberration can one oppose a healthy individualism to a healthy family.

"On this day, consecrated to the Mother, let us hope that all the women in France will meditate on their role in the family organization. It is easier, in truth, to submit without reflection than to be responsible, and the individualism that we seek comes with rights and responsabilities. What we cannot sanction is that arbitrary hierarchy, the pater familias who embodies the recognition of an a priori sexual superiority, a recognition that has served as the basis for an unjust Code, which denatures the relations between spouses and creates a privileged situation for the father at the mother’s expense.

"Certain men and even certain women will perhaps regret the life of the wife of earlier days, a life extinguished, which satisfied itself with a thousand little nothings of daily life. But let us dare to say that if men find there their convenience, they are not forever happy with it and, all too often, they look outside the household for a companion capable of understanding their preoccupations and their desires.

"For the children themselves, the concept of the wife confined to the household is certainly not to be recommended. If the mother is to remain the good "minister of the interior," she should also, even in the interest of her familial mission, look outside and meditate on her responsibilities and duties.

"Any good-hearted man [homme de Coeur] retains a tender memory of his mother for the care and tenderness with which she surrounded him; but the recognition of the best men goes to the éducatrice, to her who inspired in him that which is most profound and most noble. To raise up the soul of her children, the mother must, first of all, elevate her own; in order to help [children] understand life and guide them, she must instruct herself.

"Women, do not sacrifice your personal growth to your children and your husbands; it would be in vain. They will be the first victims. For your happiness, and for the happiness of those you love, we remind you of the counsel of Julie Siegfried, who was an admirable spouse and the best of mothers: 'Women, do not remain passive; mothers, dare to be!'"

Today, women around the world are honored on Mother's Day. This year France celebrates la Fête des Mères on 25 May. For more Mother’s Day goodness, explore our online exhibition MAMA: Motherhood Around the Globe, send your mother an e-card from us, or share your favorite Mother’s Day quotes.

Berks Conference Website

Later this week in Toronto, Canada, Clio will join many other historians of women at the Sixteenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women. The first Berkshire Conference took place at Douglas College, Rutgers University in 1973. The Toronto conference, the 16th of its kind, celebrates the fortieth anniversary of the “Big Berks,” which was held at Harvard University in 1974 (Yes, Clio was there, with a small baby girl in tow). Women’s history is going strong!

Thousands of historians of women and gender from all over the world will congregate at the University of Toronto on Thursday, May 22, and meet through Sunday, May 25. They will deliver papers on their current research and talk about their upcoming projects. There seems to be no end to what we can discover and have discovered about women’s past, collectively or in the singular. Women’s historians have so many stories to tell, have unearthed so much evidence that was considered non-existent or lost, have published so many books and articles and documents about women over these forty-plus years. How many of you have read even a small portion of their work? How many of you have some idea of the history of women of your own countries, not to mention that of others?

Get acquainted with the current work and the scholar-historians who are responsible for getting these stories of women past into our hands. Visit the Berkshire Conference website and check out the online program to see who’s doing what, and learn about the wonderful findings, books, films, and other women’s history activities.

Better yet, come to Toronto if you can. The Big Berks takes place only every three years. It is a grand occasion and a “feel good” experience for all. Clio hopes to see some of you there.

Tasnim Baghdadi (copyright: Lisa Emilia Photography)

German artist of Moroccan heritage, Tasnim Baghdadi is no stranger to IMOW, having previously been featured here in the Muslima exhibition, Tasnim's work reverberates with pulsating visual and symbolic energy. Whether she's accessing and re-interpreting her Moroccan roots, reiterating her agency to articulate as a Muslim woman and artist, or donning multiple style avatars in her blog, Bedouin Colors, she continually seeks to plant question marks in people's minds as they view and engage with her work.

Her Blueprint spoke to Tasnim to find out about her iridescently textured work and journey.

You dabble in multiple media: graphic design, digital illustration, and photography. What kind of an artist would you essentially describe yourself as? What drives you to produce art?

My main motivation for producing art is the fact that art has the power of universality. It reaches out to everybody and creates a state of universal identification. When dealing with artworks, even before locating the artist´s personality and motivation [in producing them], we first and foremost find ourselves in them. Art functions like a symbolical mirror to our own subconciousness. I'm very interested in these aspects and how art is able to change perceptions of the self and the others, bringing individuals from different parts of the world with varied world views together and reminding them of their collective oneness. What I also love about producing art is that it can sometimes work like an act of violence in that the art forces the viewer to deal with a certain topic through the tool of provocation.

Your work is particularly preoccupied with the formation and possibility of multiple identities. How would you define your cultural identity (given your Moroccan roots and currently residing in Germany)? How does it influence and permeate your work?

I firstly perceive myself as a German artist with Moroccan roots. I was born and raised in Cologne, Germany, simultaneously imbibing the German society along with a strong Moroccan Muslim influence impacting and shaping my personality. I therefore see myself as a person who not only just comfortably resides in-between two cultures but also someone deeply connected to my parents' and grandparents' Moroccan culture, religion and ancestry. In my artworks, I always encounter aspects of both cultures embedded in them, whether consciously or not. It fascinates me to work with contrasts and my own cultural contrasts figure as a main part of nearly all my works. I think that being inbetween two different cultures nowadays is not always easy, especially when you are young and on a journey for your personal identity; however, it also equips you to appreciate multiple nuances and layers and from myriad perspectives – and that aspect I really appreciate.

What role does gender play in your life and how do you address it through your work?

Gender is one of those aspects of life which has greatly always mattered to me. As a Muslim woman living in a Western country, I was sick of hearing - from mainly white feminists - that Islam has to free their women from oppression and patriarchy given that these aspects were part of a basic human problem that we collectively needed to resolve. There was a time when I experienced deep frustration and anger towards these elite group of feminists speaking for other women of color and I in media, books, and articles, taking away our voices and therefore, denying us agency to articulate what our individual life choices and opinions actually happened to be. Such ignorance points towards a singular truth about gender and feminism whereas the situation is actually much more complex. I saw feminism as also rooted in my Muslim identity and tradition and so I subsequently decided to communicate this fact through my art, using self-portraits and slipping into different roles, creating strong images, experimenting with gender and fashion, covering up and acting free and strong. I feel that is a realistic representation of women such as myself. I feel like the world needs to learn more about and from Muslim women who struggle with patriarchy everyday, who love their religion and spirituality, and who stand firm no matter what...thus becoming role models for all of us.

Tribal Mysticism: Judging You

In Tribal Mysticism, you present self-portraits of yourself adorned with tribal markings. Could you describe what you were striving to convey through these photographs?

The Tribal Mysticism series was one of my very first works. The idea for it emerged after the Arab Spring revolts, particularly those which began in North Africa. I saw all these young people in the streets with their hopes and anger about their countries' respective regimes – and that really moved me. I was drawn towards their passionate desire to lead self-determined lives, which I happened to have the privilege of leading. I was pursuing my Masters in Asian and Islamic Art History at the time and was exploring the relationship between contemporary popular art and propaganda art in communist countries such as Russia and China as well as poster art in Iran during the 1979 revolution. As I absorbed all these bold, colorful posters and the strong messages that I was analysing, I felt the need to create something similar imbued with the Arab Spring's spirit. I wanted to mix it up with other various influences which had shaped my life and use my face as an archetypical projection in a sense. I also tried to use colors in a very symbolic way, as in those of the Arab flags. My other main inspiration for the series comes from a photography series that strongly impacted me: Marc Garanger's portraits of unveiled Algerian women. When I first saw these strong Berber women with all their tattoos and innate dignity, protecting themselves from the evil eye that they perceived as seemingly emerging from the camera through the implacable looks on their faces, I felt as if they radiated an intense sense of pride during the time of French imperial oppression. I immediately felt the need to access this source of inspiration and present my interpretation of it within this series.

Tribal Meal 2

Tribal Meal is an intriguing photo-essay which presents the interplay between patterns and food. What comment were you making through this project?

The series came to my mind during a time in which social media and the Internet assumed the main role in providing news coverage about political conflict in the Middle East, the war in Syria dominating the headlines. Hundreds of reports and images of injured children and demonstrations, destroyed streets and military interventions were moving through my newsfeed in Facebook, Twitter and more. In the meantime, I was going to work and reading all about it while commuting or eating in the cafe. My friends and I felt desperate and powerless. It felt so strange to 'consume' all of these messages as if they were nothing more than a plate of spaghetti bolognese. It was the equivalent of fast food media, so to speak. There is a saying in German which I often thought of during that time: I don't know if I should start laughing or crying right now. In this situation marked by powerlessness, the idea for the Tribal Meal series was born, being a sequel to my first series. I decided not to work with figurative symbols and archetypes this time round; I instead used a deep rooted cultural symbol, the traditional kuffiyah and adding ketchup and a huge portion of sardonic humour to create that optical illusion.

First World Problems: Greed

Digital illustration commonly features in your work, such as First World Problems. What is it that you particularly enjoy working with this medium? You are also working on a short graphic novel, La Bedouine Obscure. Could you tell us more about that?

Well, the First World Problem series is one of my more playful works in which I mock my own generation in a sense; I describe it as the ' music-hearing-turban-wearing-blogging-primark-shopping-depressed and overchallenged-which hashtag to use next-generation' which I see myself as part of. This series is very much inspired by my love for comics, pop art and illustration. Since I was a child, comics were the most beautiful way to escape from reality into a world, where all of us could be superheros or mystical beings. I have started to chalk out the storyline for my new graphic novel, La Bedouine Obscure; it will have autobiographical elements, since the rebellious protagonist can somehow be seen as my own alter-ego you also find in the Tribal Mysticism series. However, I plan to place the whole story and scenery in a fictional world in which La Bedouine Obscure will be having her adventures and struggles until she finds what brings her to her inner self.

Tasnim's avatar as Mademoiselle Pouvine from her blog, Bedouin Colors

What led you to create your style blog, Bedouin Colors and how has your journey been so far, as in your experiences blogging and the feedback that you have received?

Fashion is one of my passions apart from the visual art, comics, and graphic design. I always love to experiment with different fashion styles and find inspiration in a lot of genres and eras. To me, fashion has to do with exploration, slipping into different roles of your personality. It´s an adventure in which I tell the world my story about how I feel and think. Many people think fashion is superficial without any deeper meaning which is comlpetely wrong in my understanding of it. I think that the way we dress has a lot to say about how we want the world to view us; we form and have the power to build up a whole concept of personality through the art of fashion. I decided to share all of my experiences and experiments with the fashion world through blogging, mixing visual arts with writing and hoping in the process that I could learn a lot about myself through it. I mainly work with second hand and vintage fashion as I feel that fashion should be linked what I describe as a more responsible, sustainable way of being stylish. I can save money, be mindful of the environment, and look good while remaining true to my values.

What do you hope people carry away after looking at and engaging with your art?

My wish is to leave people with question marks – and the reason is because I feel questions jumpstart mental revolutions. I hope to move their perceptions into being more open minded about themselves and the people around them, starting with a moment or question in their head counter to what they usually think after seeing my work. As I often get the feedback that my art seems to bring together contrasts, I feel that my main motivation is to demonstrate that contrasts and contradictions are an inherent part of our human nature. We should embrace and transform these contradictions into positivity and also, display empathy and understanding for people who are struggling with their own personal contradictions.

Find out more about Tasnim's work here.

Credit: All images courtesy of Tasnim Baghdadi unless otherwise stated.

Pulpa Chic

Since 2001, artist Clemencia Labin (born Venezuela, 1947) has been producing a series of works called Pulpa Chic.

These objects share with pop art the flat color, artificiality, and re-contextualization of objects. The pop art Labin alludes to responds to the connection between these works and the popular culture of her native country Venezuela. In Spanish, the word "pulpa" describes the edible part of a fruit.

Pulpa Chic

From her own description, Labin’s Pulpa are soft, fleshly, and padded works often covered by expandable lycra or other fabrics. They are usually built on wooden frames, filled with polyester fiber, and partly painted with acrylic paint.

With few exceptions – such as Pintamuros the flattest of her 21^st century pieces – most of Labin’s pieces occupy space and are sculptural. All of her works display a plush array of shapes, fabrics, and textures filled with something enigmatically shapely but soft. Their construction has the rigor of the Bauhaus while simultaneously displaying a casualness that celebrates improvisation. They incarnate an aesthetic which demands a narrative, one that the artist is not shy to talk about.

In 2011, Labin represented Venezuela at the Venice Biennale, and she explained how after having lived in Hamburg, Germany for over 20 years why rediscovering her home city of Maracaibo changed her art practice. On a casual visit to the neighborhood of Santa Lucia, she discovered a new palette in the bright colors of the houses' façade and interior décor.

Although that neighborhood was recognized as dangerous, she bought a house there and since 2011 has been hosting an annual art festival called Velada Santa Lucia. It is evident that the colors and patterns of her current neighborhood are reflected in her present work, albeit her worldly perspective.

Pulpa Chic

Until 1968, Labin lived and attended school in Maracaibo. After, she moved to New York where she obtained her Bachelor's degree in Arts in 1972 and later a Master's degree in Business Administration from Columbia University before moving to Germany. Throughout her career, she studied under the tutelage of Kai Sudeck, Franz E. Walther, and Sigmar Polke.

Labin’s works invite interaction and she herself interacts with the viewer as a performer. Indeed, Pulpa Nueva Mega Lucrecia (2009) puts the viewer at odds as to whether one should find shapes, or simply squeeze it or lie down on it.

2014 marks the centenary of the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918). On 28 June in Sarajevo, the heir to the throne of the Dual Monarchy (Austria-Hungary) Franz-Ferdinand and his morganatic wife Sophie (the mother of their four children) was assassinated by a local terrorist.

This tragic event led, within a month, because of the complex of secret diplomatic alliances between nations that fell into play, to the German Army’s swift invasion and occupation of Belgium and the northern part of France.

Thus began a European (then world) war that lasted for four long and brutal years, with many fighting fronts, much trench warfare, and – worst of all – horrific casualties. Airplanes became a weapon of war and poison gas was introduced. France alone lost 1.3 million men, and hundreds of thousands more were maimed for life or suffered severe psychological damage. Total war casualties are generally agreed to have topped 20 million.

Most women in the combatant nations supported their country’s war effort, postponing their fight for the vote and other desirable reforms; victory seemed paramount. They took over men’s labor in the fields and factories, including the munitions plants. By 1918, some 1.5 million women worked in building arms. There were a few women, however, who took a stand for peace. One of these was a French teacher and union administrator named Hélène Brion (1882-1962).

In late 1917, Hélène Brion and several others were arrested and charged with treason; they were vilified by the mainstream press. They were tried in a military court in late March 1919. Brion was convicted, but her three-year prison sentence was suspended.

The unusual part of this trial was Hélène Brion’s statement of defense, in which she invoked her status as a non-citizen under French law and claimed the intrinsic links between her work for peace and her feminist commitment. She talked back to power in a military court! She speaks to the difficulty women faced in ostensible democracies where women had no say in the making of laws (French women did not obtain the vote until 1944).

Here, in Clio’s English translation, is her statement. Her words are still worth reading and pondering in today’s troubled times.

“I appear before this court charged with a political crime; yet I am denied all political rights.

“Because I am a woman, I am classified de plano by my country’s laws, far inferior to all the men of France and the colonies. In spite of the intelligence that has been officially recognized only recently, in spite of the certificates and diplomas that were granted me long ago, before the law I am not the equal of an illiterate black man from Guadeloupe or the Ivory Coast. For he can participate by means of the ballot, in directing the affairs of our common country, while Icannot. I am outside the law.

“The law should be logical and ignore my existence when it comes to punishments, just as it is ignored when it comes to rights. I protest against its lack of logic.

“I protest against the application of laws that I have neither wished for nor discussed.

“This law that I challenge reproaches me for having held opinions of a nature to undermine popular morale. I protest even more strongly and I deny it! My discreet and nuanced propaganda has always been a constant appeal to reason, to the power of reflection, to the good sense that belongs to every human being, however small the portion.

“Moreover, I recall, for form’s sake, that my propaganda has never been directed against the national defense and has never called for peace at any price: on the contrary, I have always maintained that there was but one duty, one duty with two parts: for those at the front, to hold fast; for those at the rear, to be thoughtful.

“I have exercised this educational action especially in a feminist manner, for I am first and foremost a feminist. All those who know me can attest to it. And it is because of my feminism that I am an enemy of war.

“The accusation suggests that I preach pacifism under the pretext of feminism. This accusation distorts my propaganda for its own benefit. I affirm that the contrary is true, and it is easy for me to prove it. I affirm that I have been a militant feminist for many years, well before the war; that since the war began I have simply continued; and that I have never reflected on the horrors of the present without noting that things might have been different if women had had a say in matters concerning social issues.

[. . . . .]

“I am an enemy of war because I am a feminist. War represents the triumph of brute strength, while feminism can only triumph through moral strength and intellectual values. Between the two there is total contradiction.

“I do not believe that in primitive society the strength or value of woman was inferior to that of men, but it is certain that in present-day society the possibility of war has established a totally artificial scale of values that works to women’s detriment.
“Woman has been deprived of the sacred and inalienable right given to every individual to defend himself when attacked. By definition (and often by education) she has been made a weak, docile, insignificant creature who needs to be protected and directed throughout her life.

“Far from being able to defend her young, as is the case among the rest of creation, she is [even] denied physical education, sports, the exercise of what is called the noble profession of arms. In political terms she is denied the right to vote – what Gambetta called ‘the keystone of every other right’ – by means of which she could influence her own destiny and have at least the resource to try to do something to prevent these dreadful conflicts in which she and her children find themselves embroiled, like a poor unconscious and powerless machine. . . .

“You other men, who alone govern the world! you are trying to do too much and too well. Leave well enough alone.

“You want to spare our children the horrors of a future war; a praiseworthy sentiment! I declare that as of now your goal has been attained and that as soon as the atrocious battle that is taking place less than a hundred miles from us has been brought to a halt, you will be able to speak of peace. In 1870 two European nations fought – only two, and for scarcely six months; the result was so appalling that throughout all of Europe, terrified and exhausted, it took more than forty years before anyone dared or was able to begin again. Figure that as of now we have fought, not six months, but for forty-four long months of unbelievable and dreadful combat, where not merely two nations are at odds, but more than twenty – the elite of the so-called civilized world – that almost the entire white race is involved in the melee, that the yellow and black races have been drawn into the wake. And you say, pardon me, that as of now your goal has been achieved! – for the exhaustion of the world is such that more than a hundred years of peace would be instantaneously assured if the war were to end this evening!

“The tranquility of our children and grandchildren is assured. Think about assuring them happiness in the present and health in the future! Think about some means of providing them bread when they need it, and sugar, and chocolate to drink! Calculate the repercussions that their present deprivation will have on this happiness that you pretend to offer them by continuing to fight and making them live in this atmosphere, which is unhealthy from every possible point of view.

“You want to offer freedom to enslaved people, you want – whether they like it or not – to call to freedom people who do not seem ready to understand it as you do, and you do not seem to notice that in this combat you carry on for liberty, all people lose more and more what little they possess, from the material freedom of eating what they please and traveling wherever they wish, to the intellectual liberties of writing, of meeting, even of thinking and especially the possibility of thinking straight – all that is disappearing bit by bit because it is incompatible with a state of war.

“Take care! The world is descending a slope that will be difficult to remount.

“I have constantly said this, have written about it incessantly since the beginning of the war: if you do not call women to your rescue, you will not be able to ascend the slope, and the new world that you pretend to install will be as unjust and as chaotic as the one that existed before the war!”

Source: “L’Affaire Hélène Brion au 1^e Conseil de Guerre,” Revue des Causes Célèbres, no. 5 (2 May 1918), pp. 152-154. Transl. Karen Offen, orig. publ. in Women, the Family, and Freedom, ed. Susan Groag Bell & Karen Offen (1983), vol. 2, pp. 273-275. By permission of the translator.

In Conversation with Azar Emdadi

A Year of "Shoveling"

Chandrika Marla: Textile Dance of Relationships

In Conversation with Ana Álvarez-Errecalde

Human Rights and the "Other"

My Cup of Tea: Narrating Collective and Individual Stories through Illustration

Kalyani Ganapathy

Shreyas R Krishnan

Bakula Nayak

Trusha Sawant

El Lugar de la Mujer: A Woman's Place

International Museum of Women Merges with Global Fund for Women

May San Alberto: On Artemisias and Airing Inequality

How United Religions Initiative Celebrated International Women’s Day

Sandra Vásquez de la Horra: Hybrids

Human Rights and Parental Rights in the ECHR

An Elemental Ode to Space: Neha Vedpathak

Liliana Porter and the Toys of Solitude

Manal al Dowayan: Speaking the Individual and Collective Voice

CLIO TALKS BACK: “Mothers, dare to be...” Words of Courage for Mothers from Cécile Brunschvicg

"Mothers, Dare to Be"

CLIO TALKS BACK: Congratulations to the 16th Berkshire Conference on the History of Women!

Tasnim Baghdadi: Embracing the Multiple and Myriad

Clemencia Labin and the Colorful Pulpa Chic

CLIO TALKS BACK: World War and Women