Finché non siamo libere (Until We Are Free)

The Municipality of Brescia and Fondazione Brescia Musei with Alleanza Cultura, in collaboration with the Associazione Genesi and the Festival of Peace, today present the exhibition Finché non siamo libere (Until We Are Free) curated by Ilaria Bernardi, which from 11 November will be on display in the halls of the Santa Giulia Museum in Brescia: an exhibition dedicated to the dramatically topical theme of the condition of women in the world, with a particular focus on Iran.
Until We Are Free offers an all-female interpretation of the title of the book Until We Are Free. My Fight for Human Rights in Iran by Shirin Ebadi, Iranian lawyer and pacifist in exile since 2009, the first Muslim woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize (2003) for her efforts for democracy and human rights, in particular of women, children and refugees.

An exhibition that acquires an even more significant meaning following the proclamation of the Nobel Peace Prize 2023, which will be awarded next December to Narges Mohammadi – Iranian activist, vice-president of the Centre for the Defence of Human Rights, imprisoned by the Iranian authorities in May 2016 and still currently in prison – "for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and to promote human rights and freedom for all" and the awarding of the Sakharov Prize 2023 for Freedom of Thought to Jina Mahsa Amini and the Iranian protest movement "Women Life Freedom" announced on 19 October in Strasbourg by the President of the European Parliament Roberta Metsola.
The exhibition Until We Are Free continues and expands a strand of research and in-depth study promoted by Fondazione Brescia Musei since 2019, which has chosen to investigate geo-political contexts of stringent topicality through the perspective and production of contemporary artists. Previous chapters of this series have been the exhibitions dedicated to the relationship between art and rights, featuring Turkish artist and activist Zehra Doğan (We will also have better days. Works from Turkish Prisons, 2019), who thanks to this solo exhibition was included by The Art Newspaper among the 100 most influential people in the contemporary art world; the Chinese artist and activist Badiucao (La Cina non è vicina, 2021) – protagonist in 2022, thanks to the success of the Brescian exhibition, of a travelling exhibition at the Dox Center for Contemporary Art in Prague, MADe IN CHINA – and the Russian artist and activist Victoria Lomasko (The Last Soviet Artist, 2022).