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Accepted Paper:

"I embroider the beauty that is in my head and not the dead trees around me": gender, resilience and ending violence against women and girls in South Sudan.  
Tamsin Bradley (University of Portsmouth)

Paper short abstract:

This paper pieces together the fragmented and insecure realities of women in South Sudan through the art form called Milaya (bed sheet embroidery). Focusing on art is an important way into a deeper more nuanced picture of how women maintain resilience in humanitarian contexts of extreme crisis.

Paper long abstract:

"The eye is the strongest thing …. You draw anything that comes to mind … every woman is doing embroidery, no woman is idol because it is important in the life of a woman, when you come to that age you start, you draw meaning, the skill will come to your mind, whatever you want in life." This passage was shared by a married woman 33 years of age living in Juba, South Sudan. She is a bed sheet embroiderer. Here she describes how she draws on her imagination to create designs that are beautiful and as this paper will argue, allows those that make them and those that receive and use them, to imagine a different and more beautiful life. The fundamental relationship between art and womanhood (as it is understood by many women in South Sudan) is very striking in this passage and in many stories often shared. This paper attempts to piece together the fragmented and insecure realities of women in South Sudan through the lens of a specific art form called Milaya. The paper argues that focusing on art is an important way into a deeper more nuanced picture of how women find and maintain resilience in humanitarian contexts of extreme crisis.

Panel P06
Arts for Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa
  Session 1 Friday 8 July, 2022, -