A couple dozen visual artists are coming together this Saturday for an exhibition focused on the oppression of women, curated by a Windsor woman who escaped Iran three years ago.
Maryam Safarzadeh came to Canada after leaving Iran with her son and daughter to escape the country’s government.
The visual artist made it her goal to curate a gallery of protest art to shine a light on the plight of oppressed women around the world, including her home country of Iran.
“I’m in a free country. If my people, if women can’t talk, I’m gonna be their voice,” said Safarzadeh, who points out women who do this in Iran face prison time.
“You shouldn’t have a filter, you should just express your feelings, talk about what you want to talk about,” she said.
Her show “Women, Life, Freedom” brings together 27 artists from all over the globe, each with a story to tell.
One of those artists is Kobra Safi, who escaped the Taliban rule of Afghanistan six months ago. The trained surgeon started painting while in a refugee camp and the passion turned into a great outlet for her pain and sorrow.
This weekend, Safi is taking part in her first art exhibition.
“We have the same pain and that’s why we work together and we made the art about ourselves,” said Safi, whose painting depicts women of various professions hanging from a tree while the Taliban look upon them with pointed guns.
“I want them to know what is going inside of me and what is going on with Afghan woman,” she said. “That’s why I like to express something inside the paintings for them to know their stories.”
Asaph Maurer has a completely different story. The Windsor artist explains he was part of an extremist Christian Cult that moved around between Mexico, the United States and India. He managed to escape 11 years ago.
“The minute that I heard about this exhibition from Maryam, I instantly related to the concept of suppression of freedom of expression, whether that be through art or through dress,” he said.
Maurer painted a picture of a woman who was shot in the eye for speaking up. It symbolizes oppression and control, he said, through violence, noting it’s an uncomfortable reality that people need to see.
“A lot of these images are not beautiful, scenic landscapes that you can put in your living room,” he admits. “However, I think that one way to get involved is to attend exhibitions like this and feel the discomfort.”
Judy Chappus drew her inspiration from a woman she met at a public shower. Chappus said the woman agreed to be photographed and has since become the subject of many of her paintings. This one fits, Chappus said, because she exuded confidence, power and presence.
“She’s almost the opposite of what is expected of women in Iran,” said Chappus. “I liked how I can associate this with taking the hijab off because I feel like if women did that, they would just release all this incredible power.”
Women, Life, Freedom goes on display at Art Windsor-Essex Saturday, April 1 from 12 to 5 p.m. with the official program running 2 to 5 p.m.
The art pieces will be on display at Sho Art Studios for the two weeks following.
Safarzadeh is excited to lay it all out on the line.
“I can’t go back to Iran, because they’re going to arrest me for sure. But I don’t care,” she said.
“This is supporting these women. And this is about talking about the truth, even it’s not beautiful.”
LONDON (AP) — With a few daubs of a paintbrush, the Brontë sisters have got their dots back.
More than eight decades after it was installed, a memorial to the three 19th-century sibling novelists in London’s Westminster Abbey was amended Thursday to restore the diaereses – the two dots over the e in their surname.
The dots — which indicate that the name is pronounced “brontay” rather than “bront” — were omitted when the stone tablet commemorating Charlotte, Emily and Anne was erected in the abbey’s Poets’ Corner in October 1939, just after the outbreak of World War II.
They were restored after Brontë historian Sharon Wright, editor of the Brontë Society Gazette, raised the issue with Dean of Westminster David Hoyle. The abbey asked its stonemason to tap in the dots and its conservator to paint them.
“There’s no paper record for anyone complaining about this or mentioning this, so I just wanted to put it right, really,” Wright said. “These three Yorkshire women deserve their place here, but they also deserve to have their name spelled correctly.”
It’s believed the writers’ Irish father Patrick changed the spelling of his surname from Brunty or Prunty when he went to university in England.
Raised on the wild Yorkshire moors, all three sisters died before they were 40, leaving enduring novels including Charlotte’s “Jane Eyre,” Emily’s “Wuthering Heights” and Anne’s “The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.”
Rebecca Yorke, director of the Brontë Society, welcomed the restoration.
“As the Brontës and their work are loved and respected all over the world, it’s entirely appropriate that their name is spelled correctly on their memorial,” she said.
