UN Human Rights partnered with civil society organizations, Minority Rights Group International, Freemuse and the City of Geneva, for the second edition of the International Art Contest for Minority Artists. The theme of this year’s contest was for minority artists to expose, explore, and address matters relating to intersectionality and compounded forms of discrimination through their artwork.
Artist and journalist, Elahe Zivardar, also known as Ellie Shakiba, was awarded an honorable mention at the “International Contest for Minority Artists” in Geneva, Switzerland.
The Judges Panel was impressed by the remarkable commitment of the artist to explore minority issues from an intersectionality perspective. Zivardar has dedicated herself to shedding light on the denial of rights and discrimination facing minority asylum seekers and migrants.
The Judges Panel highlighted the strong impact that Zivardar’s thought-provoking paintings can have in societies where migrants, particularly women and children, face multiple and aggravated forms of discrimination on migration roads and at borders. For instance, her painting entitled “Nameless” (2017) depicts the consequences of border control policies and detention for pregnant female migrants, in a context where migrant women – particularly those with irregular migration status – face heightened risks of human rights violations, including violations of their reproductive rights or sexual and gender-based violence at the hands of smugglers, traffickers, border officials, and other state actors. “Abortions are illegal in Nauru, and the Australian Government only permits refugee women to be transferred to Australia for an abortion after five months into a woman’s pregnancy. These women were trying to reach freedom, and the price was that their babies will be forever nameless,” Zivardar writes about this painting.
Source: Catalog of International Art Contest – Minority Artists Working On Intersectionality Themes
