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| A photograph by Angèle Etoundi Essamba at the UNESCO show. |
The
statistics are sobering: “women and children constitute two-thirds of the
world’s poor … women make up just 21 percent of the world’s parliamentarians …
seven out of 10 women report having experienced violence in their lifetime”.
Even on
International Women’s Day (March 8), women will experience abuse and worse.
Aware of this, the artists taking part in a wide-ranging exhibition at the
Paris headquarters of the United Nations’ cultural agency, UNESCO, have chosen
to focus on women’s strength in the face of continuing struggles.
Through
paintings, photographs, sketches, video and other media, they are highlighting women’s
contributions and perseverance in a world where girls still face discrimination in
many countries, including those that are member states of UNESCO.
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| Angèle Etoundi Essamba discusses her work. (© McKenzie) |
“This is
about strength as well as fragility,” said the Cameroon-born photographer Angèle
Etoundi Essamba, who has contributed 25 luminous portraits from her “Women of the
Water” project to the group show.
Her huge
photographs depict women, girls, and mothers with children as they go about
their work or daily life on the waterways of Benin. The aim is to show how
women are coping with climate change, poverty and global water issues, amid
other concerns. But the overall impact is one of beauty.
“The show
combines art and development,” Essamba said. “It shows the daily struggles that
these women are dealing with, but they go for it, they fight and they survive.
“This is what
inspired me to do this work - to show how brave they are, and how elegant and
strong and proud they are,” she added.
The subjects
of her photographs are dressed in traditional clothing, and are seen steering
canoes, ferrying their children to school, washing clothes. The creative use of
light and colour take the pictures into the realm of art, but art that inspires
discussion.
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| Photojournalist Natalia Ivanova with image. (© McKenzie) |
Emmanuel
Dollfus, a spokesman with the French Development Agency, which partially funded
the project, told SWAN that the photographs would help to make the
international community more aware of the impact of climate change on local
communities and especially on women. Besides Paris, Essamba’s works will be
seen in a number of other cities, including Amsterdam, where she is based.
The UNESCO
exhibition, which is open to the public until March 20, also features paintings
from Azerbaijan artist Asmar Narimanbekova, Bangladeshi painters Rokeya Sultana
and Kanak Chanpa Chakma, and traditional textile art from indigenous women in Bolivia.
For her part,
the Russian photojournalist Natalia Ivanova is presenting a project that
examines notions of feminine beauty. Titled “Les Origines de la Beauté ” (The
Ethnic Origins of Beauty), the non-commercial documentary and artistic venture
seeks to capture feminine appearances in all their diversity.
Ivanova has
photographed women in Moscow as well as in Paris, including some who were just
passing through, and the project includes a video of interviews in which her
subjects talk about their life and experiences.
One hundred
women have so far participated in the photo series, but Ivanova plans to create
more than 5,000 portraits, which would bring together all the “ethnicities of
the human race”. The project is also a plea for peace and for an end to
discrimination, she said.
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| An excerpt from "The Ethnic Origins of Beauty" by Natalia Ivanova |
