AYAK: The body as political. Restoring our honour, beauty and dignity, 2018

This painting was inspired by a TIMES Magazine cover story, on victims of rape as a weapon of war. In the story Ayak from SOUTH SUDAN poses while nine months pregnant because of being raped repeatedly while fleeing South Sudan to a UN refugee camp. As the news report indicated, “the very act of photographing Ayak and her unborn child gave her the opportunity to celebrate the very thing her perpetrators had tried to rob from her – her beauty and her dignity.”