Brescia, Zehra Dogan, great work of art for resistance to the corona virus

Brescia, the Municipality of Brescia and the Brescia Musei Foundation, chaired by president Francesca Bazoli and directed by Stefano Karadjov, will present on Monday 20 July 2020 at 18.00pm a site-specific work by Zehra Doğan dedicated to the resistance of the city of Brescia to the Coronavirus which the artist wanted to donate to the Brescia Musei Foundation. Caught in Geneva by the lockdown and therefore unable to produce a mural directly in Brescia, the artist created a digital work printed on a surface of 130 mXNUMX to decorate a monumental view of Piazza del Foro, the archaeological heart of the city.

In the work, Zehra Doğan portrays herself in a nurse's dress while fighting against Covid-19 using a phonendoscope as a sling, echoing the biblical clash between David and Goliath; the first verses of "Bella ciao" appear alongside the protagonist, combining the theme of the fight against the pandemic with the values ​​of resistance, for which Brescia was awarded the Silver Medal, and in general with the themes of the wars of liberation, the fulcrum of the research artistic life of Zehra, her political commitment and her human story. The work will remain on display until at least September this year. Brescia Musei Foundation expresses heartfelt thanks to the lawyer. Andrea Boghi for the concession of the surface on which the work is installed.

The big installation will be inaugurated on Monday 20 July and her gift to the Brescia Musei Foundation crowns the partnership between the Kurdish artist and journalist and the city of Brescia, created with the exhibition “We will also have better days – Zehra Doğan. Works from Turkish prisons”, held from 16 November 2019 to 8 March 2020 at the Santa Giulia Museum and inaugurated on the occasion of the Peace Festival. The exhibition, curated by Elettra Stamboulis and accompanied by a catalog published by Skira, was the artist's first solo exhibition with a curatorial approach and marked his discovery by the European public. The exhibition was a great success with an attendance of 17.456 visitors.

Zehra Doğan's exhibition at the Brescia Musei Foundation
The exhibition itinerary brought together around 60 unpublished works, including drawings, paintings and mixed media works created during the artist's detention in Turkish prisons, in which Zehra Doğan was locked up for almost three years due to her artistic and journalistic commitment to of the liberation struggle of the Kurdish people.
The exhibition was accompanied by various important special events, since the inauguration which saw the participation of the President of the European Parliament David Sassoli. The rich program of in-depth activities for the adult public, for families and schools included dozens of workshops and guided tours which attracted hundreds of people; the laboratory at the Verziano prison is particularly significant. On Saturday 23 November 2019, the artist created a live portrait of Hevrin Khalaf, general secretary of the Syrian Future Party and women's rights activist, barbarically killed the month before by militiamen at the Santa Giulia Museum.
The valorization of the artist thanks to the Brescia exhibition resulted in an invitation to participate in dialogue with Roberto Saviano on the program “Che tempo che fa” in December 2019.

Thursday 23 July 2020 at 23.15pm
RaiUno will broadcast the Paestum Concert of the Ravenna Festival directed by Riccardo Muti, this year dedicated to Syria, which hosted a contribution by Zehra Doğan.
Zehra Doğan took part, last July 3rd in Ravenna and July 5th in Paestum, in the two concerts of the Ravenna Festival directed by Riccardo Muti, entitled "The paths of friendship: concert for Syria" and dedicated to the city of Damascus, to the archaeologist Khaled al-Asaad, killed by ISIS in 2015, and to the activist Hevrin Khalaf, recently killed by militiamen.
On this occasion, in addition to presenting a painting dedicated to Hevrin Kahlaf that she created during the concert in Ravenna, Zehra Doğan conducted an intense performance accompanied by songs by the Kurdish artist Anyur Doğan in memory of Khaled al-Asaad in the temple of Paestum . Zehra Doğan danced among the Doric columns holding a white flag, then creating a drawing of the goddess Ishtar, the Babylonian deity of love, on her tunic.

Zehra Dogan, the City of Brescia and the Brescia Museums Foundation
The great visibility and international prestige of Zehra Doğan are linked to the institutional recognition received with the Brescia exhibition "We will also have better days", with which Zehra Doğan was able to make her cry for freedom resonate. The quality and multifaceted character of her art are intertwined with her dramatic personal story and with her pressing geopolitical events and with the moment of great pain and loss caused by the recent pandemic. The president of the Brescia Musei Foundation, Francesca Bazoli, also on behalf of the Municipality, thanks Zehra Doğan for the gift she wanted to give to the Brescia community and expresses heartfelt satisfaction for the great response received from the exhibition at the Santa Giulia Museum.

BIOGRAPHY
ZEHRA DOĞAN
Zehra was born in 1989 in Diyarbakır, Turkey. She graduated from Dicle University's Fine Arts Program and co-founded the first all-female news agency, JINHA (Jin means woman in Kurdish), for which she worked from 2010 to 2016, until JINHA was closed by a government decree. Over the years, Zehra Dorğan has been awarded several awards, such as the Metin Göktepe Journalism Award, one of the most prestigious in Turkey and recently the “Exceptional Courage in Journalism Award” from the Fondation May Chidiac (MCF) in Lebanon. During the war in Iraq and Syria, the artist and journalist directly covered events from both countries and was one of the first journalists to tell the story of Yazidi women enslaved by ISIS in northern Iraq. During the period of conflict in the Kurdish areas of Turkey, Doğan tried to cover the war in cities affected by the curfew such as Cizre and Nusaybin, areas where the presence of journalists was banned by the national government.
In July 2016, Zehra Doğan was imprisoned in Mardin, the day after leaving Nusaybin. Following a trial, in March 2017 she was sentenced to serve 2 years 9 months and 22 days in prison for “terrorist propaganda” due to her journalistic writings and a watercolour. On October 23, 2018, a forced pick-up took the artist from Diyarbakir prison to the higher security prison in Tarsus.
Zehra's work was exhibited in August 2016 in France, at the Douarnenez Film Festival. In 2017, while awaiting trial after the first detention, you organized an exhibition in Diyarbakır, entitled “141” (the number of days spent in cell) with paintings created in prison.
On October 8, 2018, on the occasion of the 84 International PEN Congress in India, Zehra Doğan becomes an honorary member of the association in absentia. In the same year, her works included in “141” and her paintings produced between her release and subsequent re-incarceration, as well as the following works created in prison were exhibited in Europe thanks to the work of the association's volunteers Kedistan.
In November 2019, his correspondence with Naz Oke during his imprisonment entitled “Nous aurons aussi de beaux jours” will be published by the publishing house Editions de Femmes, from which the title of the Brescia exhibition draws inspiration.