African Artists’ Foundation calls for female photographers to mark IWD

• Evwierhoma calls for action against women’s vulnerabilities, pain

By Editor

IN a planned workshop in honour of International Women’s Day titled ‘Art of Documentary Photography (Storytelling)’ that will be facilitated by Toluade Ayodele and Damilare Adeyemi, The African Artists’ Foundation has made a call to female artists to submit portfolios to participate. Date is Saturday, March 12, 2022. Time is from 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm at the Foundation’s location, 3b Isiola Oyekan Close, Victoria Island, Lagos.
According to a statement from the foundation, female photographers who are interested in learning about the importance of storytelling using photography and its techniques to improve their work are invited to submit their portfolio. Male photographers can also submit their works to be part of the workshop. Selected applicants will be required to bring a Camera.
Portfolio should be sent with the email subject: IWD Workshop – Artist’s name to submissions@africanartists.org.
In a related development, a professor of Theatre Arts at the University of Abuja, Nigeria, Mabel Evwierhoma, has felicitated with fellow women on the occasion of International Women’s Day in a statement she titled ‘Vulnerability in Displacement: Women and the Faces of Pain’.
According to her, “There is an urgent need to consider and eradicate the faces of pain that have become common in Nigeria as a result of the vulnerability of women, arising from insecurity and displacement. Most of the time, we consider displacement to be physical. There are mental, economic, political and social aspects to displacement that women suffer in Nigeria today, from the home, to the workplace and other areas of life in society. The causes of pain are also many. Some of them are listed here, in no particular order: Rape and other sexual and gender-based violent acts, intimate partner physical and psychological torture, murder, forced hunger and deprivation, marital estrangement, as well as cyber violence.”
Though she said women may trapped in these uncomfortable bubbles of pain, there is need for women to bind together to repel these sources of suffering common to them across ages.
“Although there may seem to be no ways of escape from these continued sources of vulnerability suffered by women at the moment,” she said, “the need for women to act in unison against these and other forces of displacement is imperative. However, women are in solidarity with one another and commiserate with the physically, or internally-displaced women across Nigeria, who seem to labour in vain, despite being citizens of our dear country. Whether it is vulnerability that leads to pain, or pain that results in vulnerability, and further the bias that women suffer, women can ease the pain and further reduce the barrier that they endure, by being one in solidarity for different types of activism to abrogate the foundation of pain in society.”
Evwierhoma affirms the possibility of redemption from the many biases and barriers that hold women back in society and urged them to look to a bright future, with renewed hope.
“It is possible to be free from bias,” she asserted. “It is possible to break and surmount the barriers that women have faced in recent times, or those that may arise in future. Women shall be counted among the educated and empowered. Women shall sit at the table of governance with their male counterparts to make and influence policy. Women shall be involved in governance. Together, women break barriers.
“Happy 2022 International Women’s Day!”