Art at Glasgow FiLiA 2023

In my childhood I was tortured by family and others. When I made art it was a little freedom space in the midst of living in terror. 

I’d been threatened never to tell anyone, but I’d never been told not to draw to tell, so in my healing process, I made pencil stick drawings of my memories as they emerged.

I learned that torture of girls and women by family and other persons in criminal networks was a human rights violation, but that in many countries, including the UK, there is no specific crime of torture when perpetrated by family, partner, pimps, johns, exploiters and groups, so I began to use my feminist art voice in art activism. I made posters about non-State torture and spoke out using my drawings. 

I’ve been exhibiting one or two pieces of my art most years at FiLiA since 2014. I’d been wanting to make an exhibition of more pieces of my art for a while, when in November 2022, a group based at the UN in Vienna: The Alliance of NGO’s on Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice: Working Group on Non-State Torture inflicted by Non-State Actors (NST) asked to use my NST poster to create the flyer for a livestream exhibit & discussion on NST at the UN Vienna Rotunda. This exhibition gave me the courage and inspiration to create an exhibition of my story, art and activism for FiLiA 2023 in Glasgow! 

I was thrilled by women’s responses to the Glasgow exhibition. I loved women’s curiosity and questions. It’s important to me to use my art and activism to un-silence my story and other women’s stories to raise awareness of the torture of girls and women, particularly within families and informal criminal groups so we can work to prevent torture and offer specific torture informed support. I hope to create a larger exhibition and take it around to different spaces!