Overview

Tomorrow was an exhibition of artworks by Freedom Women Collective, comprised of a core group of five women artists who resettled as refugees in the UK. Their work, developed with collaborators including photographer and visual researcher Dr Lee Karen Stow, captured stories of resilience, survival, and hope in the face of war and upheaval.

Freedom Women Collective includes artists from Ethiopia, Libya, Somalia, Syria and Sudan, who expressed their stories in visual and textile art, sculpture, performance, poetry and photography. At the heart of this commission was a photo film, exploring ownership of representation and memory of displacement.

The exhibition shed light on the women’s lives before conflict and the trials they faced on their journeys. Photographs - carried across borders, preserved in holdalls, carefully stored in decorative photo albums, or safeguarded on digital devices - serve as poignant testaments to their experiences.

Audiences
30 August -27 September, 2023
The Ferens Art Gallery
Project Partners

Freedom Festival Arts Trust

Communities and Places

Tomorrow was presented as part of Freedom Festival, an annual arts and culture programme in Hull. The Festival is inspired by William Wilberforce, a politician and citizen of Hull who campaigned for over 20 years to abolish Transatlantic Slavery in 1807. Today, Freedom Festival addresses a range of social injustices around the world, giving voice to often unheard communities and minorities through creative projects.  

As part of a programme of events across the festival, the Freedom Women Collective hosted a panel discussion to explore notions of precarity and home in the context of war, conflict and displacement. Visitors also had an opportunity to meet the artists. 

Watch Film

Freedom Festival

A short film about the project featuring members of the Freedom Women Collective

Find out more

  •  Dr Lee Karen Stow discusses Tomorrow

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