In this beautiful interview with Kurdish artist Zehra Dogan, which I would call moving, there are a few of my contributions regarding the time when I was trying to help with my drawings to support her release. I speak about the Kedistan group and Elettra Stamboulis’s dedication when she brought Zehra’s works to Brescia (Brescia Musei). Thanks to Alessandro Bertellotti from Swiss Radio and Television (for interviewing me…
But Zehra’s words are very powerful; it’s better that you listen to them from her own voice: Link
– Two years in prison for making a drawing deemed an “act of terrorism.” Kurdish artist Zehra Doğan paid with imprisonment in Turkey for her commitment to the civil rights of the Kurdish population and the rights of women in Turkish society. It matters little that the conviction was definitively overturned a few days ago by the Turkish Court of Cassation, after a review of the trial was requested last October. Drawing tanks and the Turkish flag on the rubble of a Kurdish city destroyed by the Ankara army is not a form of terrorism, but the artist nonetheless paid a heavy price: imprisonment and then exile in Europe. On the sidelines of Chiasso Letteraria, Zehra Doğan tells Laser about her relationship with art, the meaning of her work, and how she still managed to get her artwork out of prison. “I am not repentant,” written with her own blood on an installation that reproduces a prison cell, is the signature of her commitment to the ideals and rights she believes in, which not even prison could erode.
