What it is we’re communicating, how are we communicating, how do we actually realize
our human potential? That is cognitive and emotional and that’s
where the arts and culture come in. What is freedom for?
Art represents a form of individual expression that is a sort of bulwark for any democratic society.
Art is representative of human engagement with ideas.
To have our autonomy, to be able to be or become ourselves. Arts provide the opportunity
to have the experience that we are independent human beings.
A song or a painting may have been created for a purpose of a kind: recreation, entertainment,
or for social justice. Freedom of expression of all kinds but certainly
artistic freedom of expression is absolutely fundamental.
When you find that people can’t just say and do and express what they feel, you already
know you’re in deep trouble. We should protect artists by not defining
their role, by giving him the margin he defines for himself for his creativity.
If you look at the history of authoritarian societies, it’s often underground cultural
producers that are at the vanguard of thinking about how to oppose the regime and sometimes
quite innovative and alternative ways. Anything that was an alternative, an expression
of civil society we were ready to support. It is the forces outside of government, from
journalism to artists to human rights advocates, who help a society hear others, see others,
and recognize claims of justice as legitimate. God Loves Uganda is the story of the damage
that American evangelicals are doing in Uganda. We’ve screened at well over a thousand churches
throughout the country. We’re having a discussion and a conversation, and I think it is making a difference.
When I take photographs, I’m not just out
taking photographs. And I’m not just producing art. I don’t
look at people that I photograph as subjects. I look at people that I photograph as participants.
These are the people that we make history together.
I’m basically trying to create a family album, and it says that you are not alone.
And it basically says that you won’t die alone because you have family members everywhere.
I was approached by the director. It seemed like a very interesting project. Romeo and
Juliet, where each ethnic group will be playing one family, and parts of the play that were
spoken in Albanian won’t be translated and vice versa.
That’s the whole message of the production: that you have to understand each other if
you want. This border between the actors sort of disappears.
We make ethnographic comic books. It’s about giving them voice to tell their stories of
which we are the producers. We did a comic called Almaz about an Ethiopian woman who
went to Saudi Arabia and was sexually and physically abused.
And when I went back to Ethiopia, I saw the comic being used in schools to talk to young
girls about the dangers of being a domestic worker.
The educational and the advocacy impact is huge.
Art has this impact on changing minds and perceptions. We do conduct yearly field visits
to places of military conflict. Places like Iraq where artists are trying
to document quickly before it disappears what is happening around them.
This is actually the place where artists need our support the most.
Imagination is creativity, and without that, nothing moves. In struggles, artistic expressions
are indeed the essence of fighting for an open society.
My work is focused more on a reaction of the situation that I live.
The installation in the interests of Albanian parliament was about showing the visibility
of Romani people. When people ignore us, we have to show that we are here.
And I build these works in places that have witnessed trauma, that have conflicting narratives.
And particularly of the story of migration from Africa to Italy.
And it’s going to be the first Arab opera that’s going to play at the Royal Opera House.
And I think when people come to the exhibit, they have an immediate sense
of what the foundation cared about. The illumination of these significant human rights issues.
And many of us saw terrible things. No one
person could tell that collective story. So we’re looking at visual storytellers,
people who make a series of frames, which contextualize each other. So they tell the
story through a set of images. Communicating with youths through rap, hip-hop,
and other means, bringing the marginalized groups into the mainstream.
The hope is in the collective. It’s in the fact that there are these women who are doing
these struggles and who are withstanding this incredible threat against them on a daily basis.
Discovering ourselves and projecting ourselves in the future.
Art will completely change the moment, enable
action where there was fear, many things can happen from a piece of art.
We realize that when we bring people together in dialogue that actually change can happen.
Through the eyes of an artist, we can actually aspire to the reality that doesn’t exist
today. We can picture that, and it allows us to move forward.