Zehra Doğan, Badiucao, Iva Lulashi, Zanele Muholi

Museo di Santa Giulia, Brescia
Curated by Ilaria Bernardi

11.11.2023 - 28.01.2024

The exhibition project, curated by Ilaria Bernardi, aims to explore a topic that is as topical as it is dramatic: the condition of women in the world, with a particular focus on Iran.

The exhibition constitutes the fourth act of the research that Fondazione Brescia Musei has dedicated to the theme ‘art and rights’, starting with Zehra Doğan. Avremo anche giorni migliori. Opere dalle carceri turche. (2019) to continue with Badiucao. La Cina (non) è vicina (2021) and Victoria Lomasko. The Last Soviet Artist (2022).

The exhibition, which takes place in the context of the Festival of Peace and is part of the second edition of Progetto Genesi. Arte e diritti umani, explores the dramatically topical issue of the condition of women in the world, with a particular focus on Iran.

The title of the exhibition reworks, turning it into the feminine, the title of the book Until We Are Free. IRAN my struggle for human rights (Bompiani, Milan 2016) by Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian lawyer and pacifist who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

The first section of the exhibition includes a nucleus of works by female artists from the Genesis Collection, consisting of contemporary artworks by artists from around the world who reflect on pressing, complex and often dramatic cultural, environmental, social and political issues of the day.

Among the works on display, three will be by Iranian artists Shirin Neshat and Soudeh Davoud.

The second and third sections are intended as monographic tributes to two historic Iranian artists, appreciated in the world’s most important museums and exhibited for the first time with a solo exhibition in Italy: Farideh Lashai (1944 – 2013) and Sonia Balassanian (b. 1942). Therefore, not only young Iranian women artists, but also established names who, with a view to empowerment, can demonstrate how, despite the dramatic history of the country from which they come, they have largely succeeded in establishing themselves within the international art system, conveying a positive message of hope for other Iranian and world women artists.

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