Images at the “Freedom to Create” exhibition portray subjects that are too often glossed over.
F’emale illiteracy in the Arab countries, the permanent disfigurement of women caused by acid attacks in Bangladesh, human trafficking in Nepal — these are some of the subjects, usually glossed over in the mainstream, highlighted in the ongoing “Freedom to Create” (FTC) exhibition in Mumbai. The heartbreaking and precise delineation of the images is bound to touch you and and make you think about how excruciating it must be to live their lives, when just seeing the pictures is painful. FTC thus fulfils its objective of raising awareness by introducing you to women for whom freedom is a distant memory.
“For a long time, I wanted to do something about the position of women in the Arab world,” says Laura Boushnak, a Palestinian photographer born in Kuwait. “I chose education because, according to a UN report, 50 per cent of Arab women can't read or write, which is in fact the main reason Arab societies are not able to develop as they should. I got my freedom to be self-sufficient through education.”
It took a while for Boushnak to come up with the concept because she didn't want to put up trite portraits that would have gone unnoticed. “So, my friend suggested I make the women, who are seeking an education late in their life, to write on the photographs after I printed them,” says Boushnak, who also works on the projects of cluster-bomb survivors and the gay community in Lebanon.
Thus, Boushnak's ingenious photographs, of Egyptian women attending literacy classes in the illegal settlements in the suburbs of Cairo, are inscribed with amusing reasons for learning to read and write. “For example Sanaa Sayed (31), whose photograph I've put up in the exhibition, mentions that she wants to learn because she gets lost in public transport. Another woman wrote ‘I'm not an ignorant'’ And it was a like a statement she was making against her husband's family who accused her of being ignorant because she couldn't read or write,” explains Boushnak. Another elderly woman writes on her photograph that she wanted an education because she felt embarrassed when her son came back from school one day and handed her a letter she could not read.
Unfortunately, most of these women drop out of classes because either their families don’t allow them to continue (one woman was barred by her husband because she started reading his text messages) or the schools were too far away from home. That's why Boushnak decided to hang some of the prints of the images on the walls of the classrooms — in the hope that her photographs inspire at least the next group of women not to give up their fundamental right to education.
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Abir Abdullah, an artiste of Bangladeshi descent, has similar ambitions. Abdullah would like to display his portrays in the villages of Bangladesh — at the epicentre of acid attacks. “The problem is they (villages in Bangladesh) don’t have an art gallery. Otherwise, these photographs could have had much more impact. The idea is to educate both the victims and the attackers through photographs because they don’t know how to read and write,” says Abdullah who has put up photographs of women with disfigured faces and shattered lives at the FTC.
The photographs of Abdullah are purposely printed in black and white since giving it a tint would have made viewing the acid-tainted faces unbearable. But, somehow, Abdullah manages to replicate the sordid reality of Bangladeshi women far better than if he would've printed the scarred faces in colour.
The Freedom to Create exhibition is on at Galerie irchandani+Steinruecke, Mereweather Road, till June 2