Browsing by Author "de Carvalho, Emma"

This thesis takes an affective approach to studying the meanings and mobilisations of women’s bodies in the artwork of the Woman Life Freedom movement in Iran and Kurdistan. The Woman Life Freedom (‘Jin Jiyan Azadi’ in Kurdish) movement was born following the death of Jina (Mahsa) Amini on September 16th, 2022. Amini, a 22-year-old woman, was arrested for improperly wearing her veil, and was later abused by Iranian security forces. She suffered fatal wounds which led to her eventual passing. Widespread protests erupted across Kurdistan and Iran, demanding justice for Amini, and for other women and people who have been victims of the Iranian state. The protests quickly morphed into a sustained movement, which is still ongoing at the time of writing. The movement is referred to as the JJA movement in this thesis, an acronym of ‘Jin Jiyan Azadi’. Artists have taken part in the movement by creating and sharing artwork on social media. Women’s bodies feature heavily in this artwork and are significant tools of political resistance. The research question is the following: How is the female body mobilised as a political symbol in visual art of the JJA movement? The methodology consisted of combining compositional analysis and affective analysis to study the representation of women’s bodies in thirty artworks of the JJA movement. This visual data was collected from the social media site Instagram. Multiple criteria were used to select appropriate artworks, and the chosen artworks went through many stages of manual coding on the ATLAS.ti software. A variety of Iranian, Kurdish, and diasporic literature was used to enrichen the image analysis and draw nuanced conclusions on the role of women’s bodies in the artwork. Additionally, existing scholarship on affect has been used and applied to the analysis. Throughout the project, it was seen that many artists have creatively represented women’s bodies in interaction with other bodies as well as specific symbolic objects (including national flags, landmarks, hair, fists, and blood). These visual connections were affectively decoded to draw out larger political and social meanings of the body. Based on the analysis, two main conclusions are presented. First, it is argued that women’s bodies are mobilised as political symbols of Iranian and Kurdish nationhood and transnational solidarity, and second, that they have become embodied sites of liberation, strength, dreaming and memory in the artwork of the JJA movement. This thesis contributes to the growing body of academic research on the JJA movement, as well as research on visual and digital representations of bodies in Sociology. Three directions for future research are outlined in the final chapter.