Women’s symbolic prisons-agencies: a Latin American-Middle Eastern dialogue

The project aims to answer the following question: What are the symbolic prisons for women in the Global South? How does the colonial-modern-patriarchal-capitalist matrix of oppression configure punitiveness and injustice while installing symbolic prisons in different Souths? What are their personal, collective, subtle, and explicit agentic means of creating liberation despite/within oppressive and punitive circumstances?.  In this project, we will work with women from Lima (Peru) and Dersim (Turkey). In Lima, we will work with an organisation of former female prisoners who seek to collectively resist systematic stigma. In Dersim, we will work with politically active socialist women who support ‘women’s empowerment’. Methodologically, we will facilitate the creation of personal and collective collages in each city, mixing archive and contemporary images and objects. This collective creation promotes possibilities of survival through material creation and a safe space for dialogue. The possibility to play with and manipulate existing material relates to the power of transformation and the recognition of ‘cracks’ and ‘tunnels’ (the women’s resistances in pursuit of liberation). Then, we will use a visual storytelling platform to virtually display collages, quotes and texts created in these collective spaces. In so doing, we seek to create dialogue and connectedness between both Souths.