Photo exhibition in Oslo: Women in exile
Welcome to the photo exhibition Women in exile, which explores Kurdish women's experiences of daily life during and after conflict. Time and place: Mar. 9, 2024 – Mar. 31, 2024, Oslo, Project Room Gamle Munch
The exhibition shows three series of photographs: women as new citizens after their arrival in Norway, women as activists, and women who work in their homeland. The series explore the themes of womanhood, otherness, empowerment, and resilience in a context of insecurity, escape and new homelands for a dispersed community. They show the multidimensional and layered aspects of Kurdish women’s lives and activisms in Norway, and therewith evoke the audience to develop new insights and imaginations about (immigrant and Muslim) women’s lives.
The photographers are Iffit Qureshi, Benyamin Farnam, and Kurdish female photographers who were invited to portray Kurdish women and their professional lives in Kurdistan. The three different series complement and talk to each other. They question prejudices about women from the Middle East and show the many facets of citizenship and activism exercised by women. The images encourage to imagine what it means to escape from conflict and build up a life elsewhere, and what it means to be far away and still connected to a ‘motherland’. They touch the heart, inspire, and give rise to new imaginations.
The series were made in cooperation with and supported by the academic research of Wendelmoet Hamelink (University of Oslo) and the ALCITfem research team. The third series (Women, Life, Freedom. Kurdish women's work through the eyes of Kurdish female photographers) was first exhibited opened in the Asia and Pacific Museum in Warsaw in Autumn 2023.
The exhibition is free and open to all. You can visit the exhibition during Gamle Munch's opening hours from the 9th to the 31st of March.