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Featured Artist in September 2010: Mustapha Abdel Dayem, writer
Our Featured Artist of the Month September is the imprisoned Saharawi writer Mustapha Abdel Dayem. Sandblast nominated Abdel Dayem for the Freedom to Create prize for imprisoned artist together with UPES (Union of Saharawi journalists and writers) and APSO (Amis du Peuple du Sahara Occidental). We reported in August, that Abdel Dayem was pressured by Moroccan authorities to give up his political convictions in return for financial and administrational relief. About the artistMustapha Abdel Dayem is an imprisoned writer who has dedicated his pen and his life to the principles of humanity and to the defence of the fundamental right to freedom and respect of their human rights of his people, the Saharawis. He is not only a journalist and writer but also a human rights defender and the president of a human rights organisation in the city of Zag, in Southern of Morocco. He pays for his choice to fight for human rights, people’s rights to self-determination, the rejection of oppression and dictatorship and advocacy of democracy through peaceful and non-violent ways of struggle through the pen with his own safety and freedom. Dayem has been a political prisoner since October 2008 for offending the flag of the Moroccan Kingdom, rebelling and inciting an armed gathering, participating in the destruction of public property and participating in the contempt of public officials on duty (Amnesty International report in Februrary 2009). Born a Saharawi in Morocco, he fights for the right of his people to self-determination and independence and for his beliefs he is targeted by the Moroccan authorities. Mustapha writes about his people’s identity and aspirations. He writes about the need to resist, the need to fight with great humanism and civility. He defends the right to say no to oppression. He writes about his comrades, Western Saharan prisoners of conscience who are in different Moroccan prisons. He writes about the hardships he and his comrades endure in prison: torture, ill-treatment, harassment and deprivation of the basic rights as prisoners of conscience and human beings. About the artMustapha’s first published collection of short stories and writings – “I Want A Dawn!” – reflects his work embracing issues relating to resistance, prison, human rights abuses, the right of his people to their identity and his choice to write. “I Want A Dawn!” was published while Mustapha was in prison in Tiznit/Morocco. It includes stories about the victimization of Saharawis under the Moroccan occupation, stories often draw directly from his own experiences, including his 2008 hunger strike, as an act of solidarity, with his fellow Saharawi political prisoners and living conditions inside the prison and unmasked the ill treatment there and also talked about the use of drugs and the drug- dealings and how the prison administration was an accomplice to these forbidden practices. These stories were published in Al-Watan newspaper which created a huge uproar. As a result, he was again transferred to another prison in Tiznit also in Southern Morocco. Sandblast submitted the writer to the Freedom to Create prize for imprisoned artists, for which he was announced as a runner-up in Cairo on the 26th November 2010. |
Featured Artist in July 2010: Andrew McConnell, Photographer
Portrait of Djimi Elghalia (vice president of ASVDH) by Andrew McConnell
¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤ IN THE NEWS: Andrew McConnell on FT.com ¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤¤
Our July Feature is photographer Andrew McConnell and his project “The Last Colony”. The former press photographer chose the situation in Western Sahara as one of the most under-reported an dinvisible conflicts in the world:
“When I began to photograph the Saharawis, I knew I wanted to create a body of work that would somehow give sense to the overwhelming somberness of their situation. I wanted the images to have a strong message, to relate to the outside world the Saharawi’s lives, but also the injustice, and the bleakness. I wanted to give a sense that this is one long night for the Saharawi, one lasting 35 years. To show very little of the land emphasises that the Saharawi are landless, and very simply by lighting them in the darkness I was trying to say, “Look! These people are here!”.
I took statements from every subject, giving a voices to the voiceless. Their words are a grim condemnation of international efforts in Western Sahara’ the majority wants to see a return to war. Finally, I wanted the viewer to see what I had seen; a people utterly forgotten, abandoned, out of the world’s consciousness; a people as ghosts.”
McConnell is an Irish photographer who began his career as a press photographer covering the closing stages of the conflict in Northern Ireland and the transition to peace. Interested in documenting the manifold under-reported issues of the world, he left press photography in 2003 and covered in Europe, Asia and Africa.
His work has appeared, amongst others, in The New York Times, The Guardian, the FT Magazine, L’Express, Vanity Fair in Italy and German, the Sunday Times Magazine, Internazionale, Newsweek, Time Magazine, and National Geographic.
McConnell’s work was awarded the Luis Valtueña 12th International Humanitarian Photography Award and the Northern Ireland Press Photographer of the Year. He was also shortlisted for the Bayeux Calvados Award for War Correspondents 2008 and the Sony World Photography Awards 2009. Andrew McConnel was selected for The Press Photographer’s Year 2006 and 2008.
Visit McConnell’s website at www.andrewmcconnell.com.
Featured Artist of June 2010
Aziza Brahim is an emerging innovative and haunting Saharawi voice from the diaspora, based in Leon, Spain. She collaborated with London-based Venezuelan singer and cuatro player, Luzmira Zerpa, in a Sandblast event at Canning House in 2007, where poets and musicians from Latin America and the Western Sahara came together to highlight their common colonial links. In September 2009, Aziza was invited to play with her band at the 7th African Film festival in Southbank London. Download here the bi-lingual booklet on Aziza Brahim to learn about the nature and evolution of Saharawi music in the context of the struggle. Visit Aziza’s myspace to listen to this dynamic artist.
Bio:
“A Sahrawi from Western Sahara, Aziza Brahim Maichan was born June 9th, 1976 in a refugee camp near Tindouf in Algeria. She spent seven years pursuing her studies in Cuba, which she abandoned to devote herself to music. She returned to the Sahararw refugee camps in 1995. The same year she won the First National Song Prize at the festival of culture of the S.A.D.R. (Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic) and made her first recordings for the National Sahrawi Radio. She then joined the National Sahrawi Group, making her first international tour, which took her to Mauritania and Algeria. In 1998, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture of the S.A.D.R., the label Nubenegra released the trilogy ‘Sahrauis’. In the album ‘A Pesar Des Las Heridas’, two of her songs appeared, ‘Dios Mio’ and ‘La Tierra Derrama Lagrimas’, which were well received on the international market, and appeared in numerous compilations. With the group Leyuad, she made her first European tour the same year, performing on French, German and Spanish stages.”
She tells her story in an interview in Spain (translations in English):
Aziza performs traditional Saharawi music, known as el Haul:
“Like all the music of an oral tradition, it follows a set of rather strict rules, with a series of specific
codes, rhythms and harmonies which govern the course of the subjects as well as the entire
performance. Poetry is subject to the musical structure, with its various modes, which give the tone to any composition.”
Aziza Brahim at La Sensación Del Tanque in Merida, Spain:
