Cultural Resistance As Transformation

Text by Lauren Walsh

Photo selection by Maryam Ashrafi

February 7, 2024

What is cultural resistance? I have been thinking about that since I was asked to write this essay on that topic. My words accompany the many profound photographs compiled here by image-makers from around the world, including documentation in Malaysia, Bosnia, Ukraine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Iran, Mauritania, France, United States, Japan and beyond.

In looking at the breadth of these photographs, I grasp that cultural resistance is standing up for, protecting, or taking back that which governing forces have attempted to steal or destroy. Such resistance is enacted by cultural means, whether that entails action via lifestyle, customs or the arts. In many senses, these photographs also speak of cultural resilience and the ability to withstand or recover.

What I noticed as I absorbed this array of global work is that a theme of transformation stands out. Accordingly, this essay on cultural resistance is an essay on the ability of humanity to transform, especially when conditions are dire or unjust. In the end, such determination to transform speaks eloquently to the possibility of resistance and the strength of resilience.

In this first issue of Turning Point, the reader will encounter a variety of transformations, a few of which I highlight here.

A transformation in mindset. This is beautifully encapsulated in Gaelle Girbes’s 2018 photograph of a man whose face is painted white with a single tear drawn down his cheek. He is an actor performing in a version of Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov’s screenplay Numbers, a drama about a confined society attempting to gain its freedom. Sentsov himself was imprisoned at IK-8, a penal colony in Russia, when this image was made, and as he worked from afar to direct the theatrical production. (He also directed the screenplay’s adaptation to film from prison. The cinematic version was released in 2020.) From that place of detention, Sentsov used creative practice to transcend the confines of his actual, physical space. As Girbes’s caption explains, this was an act of resistance and an “escape” through artistry.

A transformation of the body. This recurs across images, for instance, in Andrea DiCenzo’s photo of “Oct 25” tattooed on a woman’s rear end and representing, as the photographer explains, the Iraqi October Revolution, known as the Tishreen Movement, which “resonated with young people throughout federal Iraq who were fed up with widespread corruption, unemployment, and political sectarianism.” The human body itself becomes the site of resistance, bearing words of activism. Likewise, Noriko Hayashi documents a tattoo, this time in Japan, where a woman’s arm bears the message “#TransRightsAreHumanRights,” a powerful transformation of self in a country that, Hayashi notes, “remains a hostile place for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.” Meanwhile, there is Hamid Azmoun’s 2022 portrait, made in Paris, of a woman whose entire face is painted like Eugène Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. As Azmoun observes, this transformation of a French woman’s face displays a “solidarity with Iranian women battling against obscurantism.”

A transformation through education. Adolescent women sit facing a blackboard in Gaia Squarci’s sensitively documented image, which simultaneously brings the viewer inside the classroom while protecting the individuals’ identities, as we—just like the women, with their backs to us—gaze toward the writing on the chalkboard. All of the adolescents, Squarci’s caption explains, are survivors of gender-based violence in Mauritania. Meanwhile, in Maryam Ashrafi’s black-and-white photograph, we again gaze at a chalkboard, this time in Northern Syria. As Ashrafi poignantly observes, the “reconstructed classroom and blackboard symbolize the prioritization of education after conflict.”

A transformation of history. A simple portrait — a man by a plaque, surrounded by lush greenery, made in Bosnia in 2022 — becomes much more with its explanation. As photographer Fabrice Dekoninck states, “Šerif Velić is a survivor of the Omarska concentration camp.” This camp, run by the Army of Republika Srpska during the Bosnian War, held Bosniak and Bosnian Croat prisoners during the ethnic cleansing of nearby Prijedor in northern Bosnia. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at the Hague determined that crimes against humanity were perpetrated at Omarska. Upon Velić’s eventual return to his home, he discovered that everything had been destroyed by Serbs. Before rebuilding his house, “he collected and buried the [old] debris before covering it all with a mound of earth, thus erecting a mausoleum in memory of his own past.”

A transformation of space. Andrea DiCenzo provides a visual example of this, portraying an antigovernment supporter painting a mural in the underpass underneath Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. What was once a blank wall of city infrastructure is repurposed into a canvas of art and activism.

A transformation in sports. Even with a requirement to wear a hejab, Iranian women play competitive sports. Maryam Majd’s photograph underscores the differing standards for men and women, as a female athlete, wearing a head covering, looks at a sports advertisement of male competitors in, as Majd puts it, “comfortable, standard competition clothes.” Nevertheless, these women transcend imposed restrictions and become champions in their fields.

The photos in this magazine go well beyond what I have described here. Some highlight legal action, or attempts to raise visibility and awareness or emphasis on psychological counselling. In short, resistance and resilience—by transforming situations, in hopes of experiencing something better—run throughout this compilation.

These photographs remind us of the myriad conflicts that exist: social, political, economic, cultural, gender-based, and, of course, traditional combatant conflict. But they also stand as a testament to the human will to persevere.