The exhibition “Faghan. Daughters Of Afghanistan” inaugurates Friday October 18 at 18.30, Officine Fotografiche, Roma : 19 portraits of Afghan women, who fled their country and now live in Italy, photographed by Simona Ghizzoni, accompanied by a previously unseen documentary by Emanuela Zuccalà that tells their stories.

The exhibition is part of the project “I Nostri Diritti: dalla negazione all’acquisizione dei diritti per le donne afghane” realized by Nove Caring Humans and Zona.

The aim is to promote awareness of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union among Afghan women refugees in Italy, highlighting its importance through the voices and faces of those who have been denied these rights. The 19 protagonists took part in a series of workshops organized by NOVE Caring Humans to listen and discuss about the issue, and at the same time they were involved by Zona as protagonists in a photogtaphic set and the documentary.

Project funded by ActionAid International Italia E.T.S and Fondazione Realizza il Cambiamento as part of the project “The CARE – Civil Actors for Rights and Empowerment” co-financed by the European Union. The exhibition is curated by Giulia Tornari.

On August 15, 2021, the Taliban reconquered Afghanistan after twenty years of Western military presence, once again establishing a religious dictatorship. The country sanctioned a chaos of violence, extreme poverty, and human rights violations. The Taliban established a gender apartheid that segregated women within the home, prohibiting them from studying beyond the age of 12, working outside the home, or going to gyms, parks, or beauty salons. In public, women were forbidden to show their faces, or even make their voices heard. For Afghan women, the only choice was between social death and fleeing abroad.

The 19 women featured in this exhibition managed to escape and now live in Italy as refugees. Their stories show us dynamic and project-filled lives before the Taliban returned to power: university students, humanitarian workers, tour guides, sports champions, women’s rights activists. In photographing these women, Simona Ghizzoni imagined giving them back the opportunity, for years exclusively male, to enter a photography studio for the pure pleasure of being portrayed. The women applied their own makeup, dressed themselves, and did their own hair, as they used to do before Taliban censorship, in order to offer the camera their most authentic representation.