ONE OF MY KIND ISSUE TWO: PRINT
GUERRILLA GIRLS SORAYA SYED SARA SALEM ROSIE MARTIN
!"#$%&'(')*&+$%&',%-+'.#+/# Designer & curator Rose Nordin
Assistant Editor Heiba Lamara Supported by Sabba Khan & Hudda Khaireh Issue two, Autumn 2013. Cover image by Alana Questell. ©OOMK Zine. If you wish to reproduce any content from OOMK Zine please contact the relevant artist/s listed. For submissions, advertising and press queries please contact: oomkzine@gmail.com Facebook: OOMK Zine Twitter: @oomkzine www.oomk.net
“Art may be the only space a women can be whole without being seen” Nayyirah Waheed
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ILLUSTRATION + 18. CHRISTINE ROSCH + 24. ALANA QUESTELL + 62. SOFIA NIAZI + 66. MEHWISH IQBAL + 68. MERYEM MEG + 78. MAHWISH CHISHTY + 92. AMY LAMBERT + 103. LEILA ABDUL RAZZAQ + 108. ROSE NORDIN PRINT + 07. DAKSHEETA PATTNI + 08. EMILY EVANS + 41. GUERILLA GIRLS + 50. SEE RED + 71. STRIKE + 68. LIMNER JOURNAL + 76. FLORENCE SHAW + 86. SORAYA SYED + 93. ALEESHA NANDHRA WRITTEN WORDS + 14. HEIBA LAMARA + 20. HANNAH HABIBI HOPKIN + 34. FATEMA ZEHRA + 40. AURELLA YUSSUF + 46. HANA RIAZ + 64. SARA SALEM + 94. RACHAEL HOPKIN + 101. HADEEL ELTAYEB PHOTOGRAPHY + 30. ROSE NORDIN + 36. ABBAS ZAHEDI + 39. FARAH ELAHI + 49. SABBA KHAN + 83. AYA HAIDAR + 98. HOURIA NIATI MORE + 26. ROSIE MARTIN + 58. NASREEN RAJA + 70. CHRISTINE BJERKE + 80. PATRICK GALLAGHER + 90. FUAD ALI + 104. RABIAH ABDULLA
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In our second issue, we discover a world of creatives and collectives who are making impressions with print. Their involvement and engagement with print processes as a tool of expression and communication is a testament to the power and enduring role of print in art and activism. From the books that open our hearts, to the adverts that wall paper our cities, to the leaflets that stir us to action print moves around us and we move around it.
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HEIBA LAMARA
The name of John La Rose is synonymous with independent radical Black publishing in Britain and the Caribbean. A committed trade unionist, activist, and poet in his native Trinidad, La Rose came to London in 1961 with sophisticated ideas on the relationship between print and politics formed by the anticolonial struggles in the Caribbean.
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The power of British imperialism
radical Black publishing houses
and colonialism in Africa and
in 1966, from their bedsit in
the Caribbean stemmed not only
Haringey. They contributed to
from physical force, but from
the momentum of radical Black
its ability to Name. Like the
activity and debate taking place
flora and fauna, the indigenous
internationally. They brought
people of these “new” lands were
back outofprint works and
cut, catalogued, and classified.
rare works which illustrated
The data accumulated assisted in
the themes and concerns of New
consolidating Britain’s power and
Beacon. Their first publication,
its ability to manufacture and
a volume of La Rose’s poems,
regulate what was known about
Foundations, served as a
“Others” and through colonial
declaration of historical
educational practice, what they
consciousness.
were allowed to know about themselves. The printing press,
La Rose, Barbadian poet,
introduced in the 1400’s,
literary critic and historian
become the machine through
Kamau Braithwaite and Jamaica
which new narratives were
poet, novelist, academic and
recorded; publishers became the
broadcaster Andrew Salkey formed
channel through which they were
the pioneering Caribbean Artist
disseminated.
Movement. Using their Honda 50 as transport, La Rose and White
“The old publishing firms”, La
sold New Beacon publications
Rose wrote to a friend in 1969,
at CAM events, in addition to
“[…] grew up within the colonial
distributing friend’s writing,
preferential market, and not
or facilitating their requests
only gave us the word but told
for books. The Caribbean Artist
us how to use it”. Having grown
Movement grew into a major
up within a colonial society,
literary and cultural movement
he envisioned a tradition
and assisted in generating a
of publishing which gave “an
cultural resurgence among West
independent validation of
Indians living in Britain. As a
one’s own culture, history, and
result of the demand for books
politics”. Publication, he wrote,
CAM produced, New Beacon grew
“implies autonomy and initiative
through an informal distribution
the validation of ourselves.
network into a booksellers and
That’s why I founded New Beacon
international book service.
Books”.
Sarah White describes how the bookladen bedsit, the site
John La Rose and his partner,
of New Beacon activity for
Sarah White, launched New
many years, gave way to larger
Beacon, one of Britain’s first
premises in 1969. While the
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HANNAH HABIBI HOPKIN I am the proud owner of a NO MORE PAGE THREE Tshirt, which I recently wore on television, giving the campaign its brief debut on the Islam Channel. As I was about to go on air, with the slogan emblazoned across my chest in bold, I suddenly thought “I hope that this is not mistaken for priggishness...”
Opposition to Page 3 can easily be reduced to campaigning for moralism, (unfortunately even unwittingly by those in support of the cause), and so supporters of Page 3 quickly dismiss NO MORE PAGE THREE campaigners as straightfaced prudes and killjoys. In my opinion the opposite of nudity is not to wear modest clothing, but rather,simply, not being nude. I am not outright offended by the sight of bare breasts, nudity doesn’t shock me, and in fact sometimes I even like it! But when it comes to nudity and in particular female nudity with all its implications, it boils down to context. The catchphrase ‘News Not Boobs’ is not a call for political correctness, but rather a request that a newspaper’s column inches not be used for blatant titillation and sexism. 22
The Sun and supporters of Page 3 smear the NMP3 campaign as a movement of pedantic, humourless feminists, and this isn’t the first time the newspaper has responded to anti Page 3 campaigners with antifeminist attacks. In 2004 (before the current NMP3 campaign began) the Labour MP Claire Short called for an end to Page 3, prompting The Sun to brand her “fat and jealous”. Despite the nastiness associated with the strip, I can’t tell you how many times I have heard it said that Page 3 is just “a harmless bit of fun”, implying that those of us who are against it have no sense of humour. Of course, it is highly possible that some signatories to the NMP3 petition would fit into the description of “pedantic, humourless feminists”, but where they are completely wrong is the suggestion that Page 3 is harmless fun. The creator of the NMP3 campaign, Lucy Holmes, drew the unpalatable correlation between Page 3 and sexual violence in an article for The Independent: “The Page 3 image is there for no other reason than the sexual gratification of men. She’s a sex object. But when figures range from 300,000 women being sexually assaulted and 60,000 raped each year, to 1 in 4 who have been sexually assaulted, is it wise to be repeatedly perpetuating a notion that women are sexual objects?” And when you find out that The Sun has a website and mobile app that allows you to view a Page 3 model in 360º, as if you were doing a bit of online shopping, the objectification of these women is inescapable. The app carries the instructions: “To see her from every angle, leftclick, hold and drag your cursor”. Exposing the implications of this objectification proves that Page 3 is not likely to be “harmless” but is it still fun? In the last few weeks The Sun decided to remove the only bit of Page 3 that I ever found laughable. ‘NEWS IN BRIEFS’ was a tiny text box that appeared alongside the model, and containing a newsrelated quotation supposedly from the naked woman herself. Frequently bizarre and implausibly worded, we’d have topless JODI, 23, from Camberwell quoting Voltaire in relation to the UK economic situation, or nearnaked LUCY, 21, from Middlesex lamenting political turmoil in Egypt. Some might say this was tongue in cheek bringing the news to the boobs – but The Sun was revelling in the absurdity of the juxtaposition of photo and comment, so NEWS IN BRIEFS looked like plain old takingthepiss out of women to me– cos we all know attractiveness and intelligence don’t mix, right?
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www.hannahhabibi.com
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So Page 3 isn’t really harmless,
fig leaves, but I do believe that
or very funny, but hey, at least
it is time The Sun turned over a
the Page 3 excuseniks aren’t
new leaf, one which breaks away
trying to say it’s something more
from such blatant sexism, and is
highbrow… oh wait! Take a look at
befitting of UK newspapers in
the comments section after any
the 21st Century. And with the
anti Page 3 article and along
abandonment of the topless Page
with the standard vitriol aimed
3 by the Irish Sun this August,
at feminists, you’ll find some
I believe that more than ever
pretty lame arguments in Page
the tide is with us. If you go
3’s defence; “appreciation of
to the NMP3 petition website
the female form”, “empowering
www.nomorepagethree.org you
women”, “freedom of speech”.
will find numerous significant
If any of those arguments were
arguments for why there should
true then why are all the Page 3
be no more Page 3, for example
models of a certain size, age and
Sabrina Mahfouz’s poignant
ethnicity? Where are the women
poem No More Page 3, with the
over 25? The women whose breasts
cutting lines “This society
aren’t pneumatic? If they really
sees women as bodies that are
are celebrating the female body
commodities; But only at their
it seems very strange that in
peak of conceivability; After
a world full of various female
which please go away and don’t
forms Page 3 only has the one
say anything; Not that you ever
form on offer. As for women’s
had anything to say anyway”.
empowerment, unfortunately
With the surging support for the
the current Page 3 set up has
NMP3 campaign, and over 120,000
me believing that a woman’s
signatories to the petition, it
achievements are proportional
is clear that we do have a lot
to her bra size! Perhaps
to say… Whether we display our
dedicating half a page to a woman
opposition by wearing a slogan
in her work clothes a doctor,
Tshirt, or by petitioning our
an engineer, a pilot might be
MPs to have The Sun sold from
slightly more appropriate. And
the top shelf, now is the time
I’m all for freedom of speech –
to fight against Page 3 and the
so, Dear Page 3 supporters, how
caricaturing of women as either
about a bit of gender equality,
goodtimegirls, or humourless
shall we have alternate days
feminists.
of male and female Page 3 like the tabloids in Austria?! No? I didn’t think so! I am not a prude, I don’t want to hide nude women and men behind
www.nomorepagethree.org
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Founder of the London Guantanamo Campaign The London Guantanamo Campaign (LGC) was founded in 2006 and has been campaigning since for the return of innocent British residents imprisoned without due process in Guantanamo Bay. “On a professional basis, I work with words every day, but I have always preferred actions. I have been involved with humanitarian organisations since my early teens but my passion has always been for human rights and justice.I set up the London Guantanamo Campaign in 2006, working with the families of some of the remaining British residents held in Guantanamo Bay, and a small core of activists grew out of that. At the time, there were a number of grassroots groups working on the issue elsewhere across the UK. We worked closely with them, and continue to work with NGOs working on this issue and a large number of related grassroots organisations. Guantanamo Bay does not exist in a vacuum and we always make the links between it and other global problems. As a grassroots organisation, we are all volunteers and our work is almost entirely selffunded. Everyone has different skills that they can contribute to make a difference. Human rights do not have the acceptability of charity or humanitarian work. It is a thankless task and has risks. People you know no longer wish to be associated with you and winning over the trust of vulnerable people, who have been let down too often, is hard work and takes a lot of personal integrity. What the campaign lacks in material and human resources is made up for in enthusiasm and passion, and the impact of our very small campaign shows globally. Guantanamo has never been a mainstream concern and for a long time, there was little interest, with the world resigned to the broken promises of politicians, but we didn’t forget, give up or move on with the latest trends. As with all other matters, the fate of Guantanamo Bay and its prisoners ultimately lies in the hands of God, but that’s not an excuse to be complacent and do nothing. I organise most of the LGC’s events, so if you’re interested in getting involved, get in touch as I can think of jobs for everyone. I’ve been involved in human rights for over a decade and have a keen dedication to justice. An important thing about the campaigning work I do is that it is not exclusive or focused on one set of individuals. Justice and human rights belong to everyone.” 40
Photos by Farah Elahi www.londonguantanamocampaign.blogspot.co.uk
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AURELLA YUSUF interviews the Guerrilla Girls + What sparked the initial poster campaign? Twentyeight years ago, we got the idea to put up a couple of posters on the streets of New York City about the state of women artists in the New York Art world. It wasn’t a pretty picture. But we had a new idea about how to construct political art — to twist an issue around and present it in a way that hadn’t been seen before. The Guerrilla Girls were born: an anonymous group of artists who wear gorilla masks in public and take the names of dead women artists as pseudonyms. Who knew that our work would cause all hell to break loose? Who knew it would cause a crisis of conscience about diversity in the art world, something museums, collectors and critics had denied for a long time. Now, it’s a no brainer...you can’t tell the story of a culture without all the voices in it. We also take on Hollywood, politics and pop culture. What kind of response did you get from the art world, and also the general public? Our strategy worked. Lots of people in the art world were pissed at us, but some of them changed their bad behaviour when we showed them how discriminatory they had been. Lots of other people in the art world were thrilled that someone was standing up to the entrenched, corrupt system. As for the general public, we are still pretty much under the radar, but our influence is growing all the time. The best part; we get thousands of emails every year from people all over the world, age 8 to 80, telling us they use our work as a model for doing their own crazy kind of activism.
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www.guerrillagirls.com
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See Red Women’s Workshop was a screenprint workshop run as a women’s collective between 1974 and the early 1990s. The workshop was based in South London and produced some of the most striking posters and pamphlets to emerge from the ongoing feminist movement. Sofia Niazi interviews founding members Pru Stevenson and Susan Mackie from See Red Workshop 19732002.
+ What is See Red Women’s workshop and how did it come about? See Red Women’s Workshop was founded by three ex art students in 1973. We met through an ad placed in Red Rag a radical feminist magazine asking for women interested in forming a group to explore and combat the negative images of women in advertising and the media. See Red grew out of that meeting and a collective was formed producing silk screened posters for the women’s liberation movement as well as for community groups and others on request. Working collectively was central to the ethos of See Red, as was sharing skills and knowledge. Members belonged to women’s
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consciousness raising groups and were active in various radical and alternative organisations. In the early days the posters were mainly produced about our own personal experiences as women, about the oppression of housework, childcare, and the negative images of women. We always thought of it as propaganda for the women’s movement. It was 1973 1974, and as young women interested in politics and social issues we became very interested in the women’s liberation movement as it came into being. We were there at the right time in the right place, and we were part of it as well. We didn’t go in to create the ideas, we went in to promote the ideas of the women’s movement, to try and make it clear that the personal is political. You couldn’t just go in and do feminist posters then come home and do something completely different – we lived and breathed it. We came to it because we’d done graphics and fine art and felt that we wanted to do something that we knew we could do well, but do it with and for the women’s movement. It was a lot to do with the images of women and the way that women were portrayed in the media they were very sexist times. That was the norm then, girls did this and boys did that, and things were just starting to be thought about. Men were going out and doing all sorts of left wing political activities, which we could do to a certain extent, but women were very marginalised and felt displaced within that.
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SARA SALEM Although my father is Muslim I never consider my upbringing to have been a “Muslim” one. We were never told to pray, fast, or read Qur’an, and when we did, it was more a social and cultural formality. It was only much later, when I was sixteen that I began to think of myself as belonging to a community of Muslims.
I began reading about Islam, talking to everyone about it. Around this time I moved to Cairo, which undoubtedly affected my sudden need to discover what Islam was and whether or not I believed in it. Mostly the questions I had stemmed from a very emotional and nonrational need to connect with life at a deeper level. Was life just about going to university, getting married, having children, writing articles? It seemed too mechanical, too boring, too devoid of essence. So, stereotypically, I became one of those people who looked for more by turning to religion. I quickly embraced Islam, and it became an important part of my life. There were issues, however, that always made me uncomfortable, and which resulted in me going through long phases of not praying or feeling connected to God. The issues usually revolved around gender as a feminist, there were certain aspects about the Quran, and especially the Hadith, which troubled me. Chief among these issues was the question of whom God was addressing in the Quran. It seemed to me that God’s audience was primarily men, although the genderneutral term “believers” appeared regularly. The Hadith presented an even more worrying challenge, as I tried to grapple with what seemed like contradictions between the Hadith and the message of the Quran. 66
I began to explore Islamic feminism, and the works of Asma Barlas, Kecia Ali, Leila Ahmed, Amina Wadud, Khaled abou Fadl, Farid Esack, and Fatima Mernissi opened up an entirely new world to me. These women (and sometimes men) were approaching the Islamic texts with the certainty that God did not privilege men over women. This certainty came from somewhere much deeper than rationality or textual deduction; it came from belief and faith. Starting from that point and then moving towards rationality made all the difference. The work these women created was stunning in both its content as well as its ultimate goal: to show that God is not what so many male interpreters have (unknowingly) made God out to be. That interpretation is a subjective act that is dependent upon our positions in society and our own histories; that once the Qur’an was revealed, it became an interpretation in and of itself; that power has played a central role in how we have come to understand Islam today; and that some interpretations have dominated, have been amplified, and by extension other voices have been muted or silenced. A feminist reading of the Quran changed the way I saw many things in life, not just religion. The first step towards change is imagining a different reality. This act of imagining is already subversive, because it shows you that what exists now is not natural and does not have to exist. Imagining a better world is already an act of resistance, as well as an act of critical thinking. That is what these Islamic feminists did; they showed me (and many others) that a different Islam is possible. The Quran speaks to me at a very deep level, and in a way that no other text has been able to. Praying makes me feel connected to myself, to others, and to God, and constantly reminds me to be humble, grateful and hopeful. Being in Mecca and Madinah have been indescribable experiences that have made me feel things that no amount of reading or writing has ever made me feel. Spirituality feeds us in more ways than we are used to; it is different from the daytoday achievements and minor victories we revel in, it’s different from our overlyrational and overlymechanised lives. It is much deeper than that. So, this is a thank you to those who dared to reinterpret the Quran. It’s not an easy thing to do—it is a sacred text revered by millions. These peopl were attacked and ostracized, and yet persevered to show that the Quran is for all. Thank you.
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(Limner image by Grace Helmer) 77
PREDATOR MAHWISH CHISHTY
The American led drone war savaging the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan hovers in the minds of many. Returning to her hometown of Lahore in 2011, Mahwish Chishty was moved to merge new media and conceptual work with traditional practice, to rerender silhouettes of unmanned Drones as vibrant cultural images inspired by Pakistan’s colourful truck art or Jingle truck tradition. We felt her project beautifully captured the eeriness of the present as seen through the eyes of both past generations and haunted future generations. www.mahachishty.com 80
REPORTAGE ILLUSTRATION
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SUBMISSIONS ISSUE 3
DEADLINE: 1ST FEBRUARY 2014
The theme for issue 3 is DRAWING, any written or visual submissions related to drawing are welcome. Here are some ideas: reporting, sketching, inventing, experimenting, tracing, planning, capturing, imagining, remembering, laughing. More general submissions relating to women, spirituality, creative practices and play are also very welcome, OOMK loves surprises so if you’ve got something special send it our way! Submissions to oomkzine@gmail.com
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DESIGN + ILLUSTRATION SERVICES
Studio One of My Kind is opening for business. We offer design and illustration services: + editorial design and layout + editorial illustration + branding (web + print) + poster design + cute sticker design www.oomk.net/studio
Enquiries to Sofia & Rose at studiooomk@gmail.com
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“More than machinery we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.” — Charlie Chaplin
ISSN 20519907