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About Us
About Us
Freedom Women Collective are photographers, artists and visual activists resettled as refugees to Hull and East Yorkshire. We include photographers and artists from Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Sudan, who express our histories and stories in visual and textile art, sculpture, performance, poetry and photography.
Our work, developed with collaborators including photographer and visual researcher Dr Lee Karen Stow and curator Professor Sarah Perks, since 2013, our collaborative projects and socially engaged practice supports female creatives who are survivors of war, conflict and displacement towards self-representation and visible activism. We document and present stories of resilience, survival, and hope in the face of war and upheaval.
Image credit © Lee Karen Stow
Tomorrow
Tomorrow
In 2023 we delivered a major exhibition Tomorrow made possible with support from an Imperial War Museum 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund commission. The exhibition was presented as part of Hull Freedom Festival, an annual arts and culture programme, and hosted by Ferens Art Gallery. It shed light on our lives before conflict and the trials faced on our journeys. Photographs - carried across borders, preserved in holdalls, carefully stored in decorative photo albums, or safeguarded on digital devices - serve as poignant testaments to experiences. At the heart of this commission was a photo film, exploring ownership of representation and memory of displacement. Watch our short, behind-the-scenes film below. Contact us for a screener of the 30-minute photo film Tomorrow.
Find out more: BBC News and IWM Blog
ipad sketch © Mayas Dirar
Women on the Line
Women on the Line
A new dimension: that of factory work undertaken by resettled refugees, and its potential for creativity and agency. Women on the Line explores historic and contemporary factory labour undertaken by refugee women and migrant workers during peacetime and wartime. We are currently collaborating with Dr Pippa Oldfield, a specialist in gender, war and photography. We research, uncover, discover and experiment with themes of factory themes through sketching, painting, photography, archival photos, screen-printing and poetry. Click here for blog entry
Illustrated Talks
Illustrated Talks
We have created two illustrative talks that offer alternative insights into the impact of war on women and families, and how creativity in conflict can provide solace, resilience, purpose, distraction and hope. For further details, please contact Lee on leestow@yahoo.co.uk
The Pink Camera
The Pink Camera
by Arafa Gouda
Sudanese photographer and artist Arafa Gouda used a small pink compact digital camera to document moments before and after fleeing war from her home in Libya with her six children. During four years living in a tent in a UN refugee camp on the Egyptian border, she continued to capture everyday moments of endurance, resistance, resilience and survival. Since being resettled to Yorkshire in 2015, Arafa continues to record the life of herself and her family in resettlement, providing an alternative perspective on the impact of war and displacement on women and family.
Image credit: Arafa and the pink camera © Lee Karen Stow
Drawing Time
Drawing Time
by Ethar and Mayas Dirar
Ethar and Mayas Dirar present ‘Drawing Time’, a series of paintings, sketches, doodles and hand-drawn mandalas created as children during four years living in a tent in a UN refugee camp on the Egyptian border. The twin sisters fled war in Libya with her single mother and four other siblings. Art occupied the long days and months of a life in limbo, bringing comfort, solace, self-protection, make-believe and a space in which to dream and imagine. In resettlement, the Sudanese artist family continue to use art to represent the refugee experience with exhibitions at Hull City of Culture 2017; Mundi Foundation Italy; ACTR Geneva; Edinburgh Print Makers; Peterborough Museum; Migration Yorkshire Leeds; University of Hull.
Image credit: Mayas at home in Yorkshire painting a memory for ‘Drawing Time’ © Lee Karen Stow
Contact us
Contact us
via s.perks@tees.ac.uk to get more information about FWC
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