Unfolding Projects

Unfolding Projects is a growing group of artists supporting Afghan women’s human rights to education and gender equity. Our intention with each of our text-image exchange projects has been to mobilise a process of support and dialogue with Afghan women. The artworks are envisioned as a meeting space for dialogue – a conversation between women who are in different places, in different circumstances, but who wish to share a voice.

Our group members have diverse cultural and professional art backgrounds, and include well-known printmakers and artists using other mediums. We started our art projects in collaboration with women learning literacy skills at the OPAWC Vocational Centre in Kabul in 2009. The artworks of the first two projects were acquired by the State Library of Queensland and the Australian War Memorial, respectively.

Our current project comprises artists’ books by 21 Australian women artists responding to writings from 16 women writers in Afghanistan who have been restricted and banned from their tertiary education since the Taliban takeover.