New Home: Our Resilience
Six women from Rainbow Sisters – our solidarity group for LGBTQ+ women seeking safety – tell their stories, hopes and dreams in a beautiful and powerful project.
In partnership with Autograph and Fast Forward: Women in Photography, six women from Rainbow Sisters have spent six months learning about how to document their lives through film and photography.
The project aims to amplify the voices of LGBTQ+ refugee and asylum-seeking women and raise awareness about their experiences through creative storytelling, whilst also being a springboard for skill development and confidence.
Our Rainbow Sisters have created beautiful and powerful work that we’re really proud of!
About the Project
Six members of Rainbow Sisters worked with visual activist, artist and educator – Aida Silvestri – as well as a host of different guest artists and speakers to develop their photography project, collectively titled New Home: Our Resilience.
What We Did
Over the course of six months and eleven workshops at Autograph, the six women explored and developed skills in: the use of analogue and digital photography; visual storytelling; lighting, composition and staging techniques.
What We Achieved
As well as the beautiful and powerful photography exhibited in New Home: Our Resilience, the group developed skills in photography techniques and visual literacy; were mentored and supported by leading photographers; and showcased their work at a launch event, in a digital gallery, and through a public digital display.
Behind the Scenes
Making Photographs
Poem with words from session with the Rainbow Sisters
4 October 2024
nothing is simple, but your lens is an eye
at the extension of your arm —
she invites you to the country of your body
where you are only new, not other —
wrapped in the rustling fabrics
of culture. let its touch be soft and sheer —
yielding as a kiss, the still-strong hand
of a woman, tissues softened with the butter
of a shea nut, and sheened to its colour.
nothing is simple, but your language is anthology
of languages: runyakitara, languages of Western Uganda —
luganda, a bit of french, swahili, mixed up
& loved. words fix down a point of disclosure —
too tender to otherwise hold. unbraid your roots,
griefs unjudged, dispelled with the sandy soil
not easily, but constantly, deeply, truly, really.
things aren’t simple, but your smile is large
containing multitudes of your loves, joys —
it takes time to make the mind a moving neighbourhood,
and the world more like your mind, but—
it is possible to dance your image into story,
transform flesh to light and shadow, prepare instant—
and love this making. twine costume around legs
history among mouth, take self into your belly
knowing:
you will be understood
you will be community
you will be beauty
you will be emotional
you will be accepted
you will be identified
and be free
– by Josie Carter
Support the Rainbow Sisters
This project was a collaborative partnership between Autograph and Fast Forward: Women in Photography.
We extend our deep gratitude to interdisciplinary artist, activist and educator, Aida Silvestri, for her mentorship, compassion, kindness and warmth in delivering this project.