Radical Love: Female Lust is a celebration of female Arab poets whose work continues to inspire and ignite the imagination today. The exhibition, which is curated by Roisin O’Loughlin, consists of female artists from around the world responding to Arabic poems, saturated with intense emotion and feeling, longing and desire. Opening tomorrow, the exhibition runs until 26 November. The Huffington Post applauded the exhibition, praising how it “challeng[es] outdated and oppressive stereotypes around women and sexuality, while proving that women of all ethnicities and religious backgrounds can talk openly about female desire without feeling ashamed.”
“I urge you to come faster than the wind, to mount my breast and firmly dig and plough my body and don’t let go until you’ve flushed me thrice.” From Abdullah al Udhari’s ‘Classical Poems by Arab Women’
Frustrated with the burial of female voices across history, the people behind this project found inspiration in those that rang out loud and proud across the Arab world over 1,000 years ago. These female poets challenge preconceptions of faith, class and the female experience long ago; they capture what it is to relish life and living.
Women across the globe, from Ireland to Palestine to Peru, Syria to Saudi Arabia, received these poems and responded with paintings, photography, sculpture, even stained glass.
Radical Love #FemaleLust showcases their artworks alongside the breathtaking poems that inspired them, full of longing and lust, pride and defiance, all sublime in their intensity.
Profits from sales of artworks are split between the artists and The Global Fund for Women helping Syrian Refugees.
The programme for the Dublin Gallery Weekend includes:
Live poetry readings from the works that inspired the show on Saturday 25 November @6PM
