Freedom To Create (Cape Town 2011).

When I was in Cape Town in November/December, I walked through the Company's Garden and was lucky enough to see the Freedom to Create 2011 Exhibition, shown on panels along the main pathway.

Freedom to Create is a non-profit organisation investing in the cultural foundations of societies to foster harmony and understanding. It focuses on regions of the world where there is the greatest need to change mindsets, believing that freedom of creative expression is key to a just society.

It was an incredibly moving exhibition, and as I walked through the gardens it was touching to hear snatches of conversation sparked by the artworks - and to share my own thoughts with the friend I was walking with.

I've included a couple of the pieces from the exhibition below. I would encourage everyone to take a look at the full selection over on Freedom to Create's facebook page (where the images and information below are from).

Nermine Hammam
Egypt
Metanoia
Mixed Media

Nermine has spent her life trying to reveal the underbelly of society, searching to show what usually goes unseen. For ‘Metanoia’, she spent three months living, eating and sleeping with the patients of a state-run mental asylum in Cairo, pushing herself to the limits of her creativity and endurance to tell this story to the world – a story that the Egyptian government tried repeatedly to ban, further dehumanising the inhabitants of the asylum.

Nermine hopes that her pictures will provide a window into a completely unknown Egypt, drawing attention to the atrocities going on behind closed doors across a country continuing to go through turmoil. Through her creativity, Nermine is looking to provide a transparent and honest dialogue to ensure that Egyptians continue to change and grow post Revolution.

Ayad Alkadhi
Iraq
Pieta II (from Widow Nation series)
Painting

Ayad’s work depicts the human condition under extraordinary political and social circumstances, in particular the drastically changing political background of the Middle East. This image (after Michelangelo’s ‘Pietà’) depicts an Iraqi mother in traditional robes holding a picture of her dead son – a negative of an image of a real victim of the Iraqi war, a translator for the American troops, who was beheaded on tape by Al-Qaeda. Ayad’s work focuses on the mothers and wives of those who died during the Iraq war, each one as much a victim of the atrocities as the loved one in the portrait which they hold.

Ayad hopes with his work to tell the story of those living under extreme circumstances, gently alerting each viewer to the suffering of their fellow man or woman and igniting a spark of compassion for people to support and campaign for a better life for everyone.