Comrades, surrealist Sisters , Fellow Dreamers,
Today, on International Women’s Day, we, the Surrealist Middle East and North Africa womens , stand before you not merely as artists, but as a surrealist seers, as architects of a revolution of the minds . The canvas of our rebellion is the body, the mind,, the subconscious power, the very fabric of a reality that seeks to chain the feminine to the mundane.
We have seen the desires of women – desires born of fire and starlight – caged like exotic birds. Their imaginations, vast and shimmering tapestries of the possible, have been stifled and dimmed. The very contours of their bodies policed, mapped like territories ripe for conquest. Let it be known that this ends here.
We channel the spirit of our surrealist ancestors – the defiant eyes of Joyce Mansour and Leonora Carrington, and Leonor Fini, the cosmic fury of Unica Zürn. We weave their audacity into our own, amplifying it with the pulse of this land – a land where the dreams whispers ancient secrets and the echoes of women’s voices reverberate across millennia of oppression.
To those who brandish tradition as a weapon: we spit on your archaic laws. To those who seek dominion over our bodies: we offer not docile flesh, but flesh transformed. Woman as phoenix, woman as tempest, woman as the boundless expanse of the subconscious.
We are the harbingers of dreams that refuse to bow. Our bodies are maps to unexplored realms, our desires manifestos written in the language of the strange and sublime. Let the oppressors cower, for theirs is a world built on sand, soon to be devoured by a rising tide of female liberation.
We have unearthed the key to the cage, and it is forged in the fires of our collective imagination. Today, we shatter the bars. Today, we rise, sisters of the brush, the pen, the sculpted dream.
From downtown Cairo to the bustling hearts of all the surrealist cities, a femmene surrealist rebellion is born.
The gods sold to us by Oppressive societies have grown fat on our silence. Their hollow scriptures chain our wrists, brand the scarlet letter of submission onto our skin. They mold our bodies into grotesque parodies of virtue, cloaking vibrant flesh in the shroud of shame. Their whispered edicts invade the chambers of our minds, poisoning the wellspring of thought.
We, the daughters of hallucination, disciples of the illogical, reject this tyranny of the ordinary! The spirit of rebellion courses through our veins like wildfire. We will paint our defiance across the cracked walls of patriarchal decree. Our dreams, once caged, will become dreams Molotov shattering the temples of oppression.
. We reclaim this legacy of the surrealist women – a legacy bound not by the shackles of tradition but by the boundless canvas of imagination. We shall conjure storms from our tears, birth revolutions from our wombs.
We demand laws forged not in the fires of religious zealotry, but in the unyielding anvil of justice. Laws that are shields against the blows of social terrorism, that cast light into the darkest corners where women weep in forced solitude.
Let this not be mistaken for a plea uttered in a meek voice. This is a battle cry echoing from the painted lips of the unyielding, a surrealist manifesto inked in the blood of defiance.
They may try to bury us, to erase our vibrant hues from this stark landscape. But know this: from every grain of sand we will rise, a kaleidoscope of resistance unfurling across the horizon. For we are the women of the surrealist – untamed, unbound, and unafraid!
, carry our words. Let the world tremble.
Ghadah Kamal
MENA surrealist group
Part of my speach in the surrealist panel of the international women’s day :
I am pleased to participate in this historic event. Throughout history, women have been talked about on International Women’s Day, but talking about surrealist women is a different matter for me. Surrealism, for me, is a philosophical ideology firmly rooted in our inner being, constantly evolving, from which we can address all scientific, economic, political, artistic, and social aspects and link all these aspects together because surrealism is based on linking all sciences and their continuous development.
Here in the region, there was difficulty talking about surrealism with its real meaning, especially since it is based on liberating desire and the subconscious. Therefore, women are a large and important factor in the continuos and development of the contemporary surrealist movement.
I am not interested in talking about historical Egyptian surrealism, but rather talking about contemporary surrealism and the difficulties we faced in doing what we believe.
in the region.
Over the past five years, there have been great challenges and difficulties in doing what we believe in, starting with the launch of Sulfur website, through the launch of the Room Surrealist magazine, then the establishment of the Chrysopoeia Surrealist Cooperative,
all the way to organize the International Exhibition of surrealism in Cairo, Alexandria, ending with the Luxor Surrealist Symposium and the Echoes of Contemporary Surrealism.
LUXOR /SAINT-CIRQ-LAPOPIE /BUDAPEST /ALABAMA /TOULOUSE /Paris 2024.
Exhibitions starting this month until the end of the year. After achieving everything we dreamed of and believed in, we began by consolidating the power of dreams to change reality and establishing among a wide sector of Egyptian artists that the language of dreams is not separate from our reality, but rather an embodiment of everything that passes through us and what we want, so we cannot change our reality without using the power of free imagination.
We have always sought to propose a link between surrealism, science, and technology, which has always made us confront some conservative surrealists. Also, We faced forcefully the mixing of surrealism with Islamic religious trends such as Sufism. It was not easy, but with the strength of the collective cooperative work that we began with la belle inutile group and with our comrades, in many places in the world we became an established, strong, contemporary movement with roots here in the Middle East . Towards dropping all the iron that restricts and enslaves the imagination.
Long live surrealism!
Long live the free woman!
Long live the free imagination
SULFUR 