ALICE AGAINST FGM

Alice Against FGM, I, II, III & IV

A series of street art interventions in response to Female Genital Mutilation which is happening in the UK, and across Europe. My idea was to subvert the classic Lewis Carol/Disney character who was in her 150th year (2015) and bring her into a twenty-first century setting in order to hammer home a point about extreme gender based violence towards young girls.

This intervention created as a response to gender inequality is an Alice in Wonderland mural in Leake St Tunnel, London (affectionately known as Banksy Tunnel.) This creative space is completely legal and the walls are a constantly changing canvas which is what makes it a huge tourist attraction.

Femme Fierce, an all girl paint jam which took place in 2014 & 2015, was the world’s largest all female paint festival at the time. Hundreds of female artists gathered very early one morning to celebrate International Women's Day by painting together. The idea was that a charity or NGO is featured and promoted during the paint jam, as there would be lots of press, it was an opportunity to leverage the media to women's causes and the fact all these women got together to paint is wonderful. Over ten thousand people walked through that Tunnel that day. It was indeed an opportunity to say something, and it was an honour to be part of it all but I was determined to tackle this subject head on and was the only woman representing FGM in my artwork, which is why the message went far and wide.

The campaign we were highlighting is “Because I am a Girl.” by Plan UK . This campaign focusses on the issues of forced child marriage and female genital mutilation. The brief was nothing too graphic, as it was a general public live painting event. This was an opportunity to take the PLAN UK Campaign to the public and I hope my conversations on the day and the endurance of my art online has made some difference. Since painting the first Alice in March 2015, my message has been spread far & wide and in Feburary 2016, I visited Vienna to make a press presentation with Petra Bayr MP to talk about how street art can make social change in the context of FGM and the National Press in Austria ran with the story. Der Standard is a paper from which foreign media readily quote when an opinion from the Austrian press is required. It is one of Austria's best-selling quality newspapers[7]in July 2007, it became the first Austrian newspaper to have a female editor-in-chief.

ALICE AGAINST FGM I

THE THINKING BEHIND THE CONCEPT

I chose Alice as she represents the archetypal yet stereotypical British girl at the age that young girls are most at risk of this procedure. I was using a statistic for here in the UK, and wanted to put that into perspective. By representing this young blond haired, blue eyed girl holding back a curtain with a sinister hidden message, I aimed to draw attention to the fact that mainstream media coverage in general does not prioritise cases of atrocity and violence that are happening in the heart of our communities, and even less so when we don’t feel that it has anything to do with our idea of “Britishness.” When we look at the government statistics we see that indeed this is a very British problem with 65,000 girls at risk per year in the UK alone of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) in 2015.

Although the artworks of the 150 female artists began to be obliterated by other street artists almost immediately, the impact of my piece of art continues though many international blogs, press reviews and the charity itself. This single art intervention although transient was viewed on the day by over 10,000 visitors and the total reach is estimated to be ten fold due to the publicity and media surrounding the event. This has created a legacy for this particular street art intervention. The wider impact is to bring the issue to a new audience, on site and via social media. These conversations that were started in the Banksy tunnel were a platform for discussion and engagement with a group of people (mostly men) who may not have otherwise engaged with the issue. This is why the medium of street art is a powerful one. I feel this art-medium enabled me to bring a voice to an unknown subject making it easily accessible to everyone.

 ALICE AGAINST FGM III& IV