Rana Ibrahim
Rana raises support for Iraqi women artists with the Iraqi Women Art and War (IWAW) mini-museum in Oxford. The Broad Street is busy with people enjoying the mellow weather of this mid-August Sunday. Rana is a busy woman, but she finds time to pay attention to every visitor on this day. As the founder and director of the IWAW project, she participates in many activities that raise awareness of the emotional cost of the war in Iraq. Being the heart of the community and caring about the diversity of representation, she oversees Islamic and Arab collections exhibited in well-known Oxford museums.
The mini-museum is full of objects: coins, photographs, activist posters, jewellery, collages, art installations lay on a hand-knit shawl with printed biographies of each artist. Rana believes that every artefact tells its own story, and through these narratives the oral history of the Iraqi community can be explored. She shows an old banknote that bears a portrait of Saddam Hussein, mentioning that her name, meaning "looking from afar", became popular after Saddam named his second daughter Rana. Then she shifts to public Iraqi protests and the importance of Tuk-Tuk drivers, who helped to get injured young Iraqi protesters in October 2018 to the first-aid stations. Under the gazebo, a cardboard model of a Tuk-Tuk lays near a long paper scroll. Visitors are busy tracing their footprints on paper, a step by step activity, and writing welcoming messages on the scroll. It will be used to greet Little Amal, a giant puppet who travels in support of refugees from Turkey through Oxford to Manchester. On a table, the nearby wind blows the pages of Rana's notebooks full of her meticulous artworks dedicated to identity, politics, Islamic and community life.
Rana says that life in the UK changed her and she doesn't feel the same person that she was in Iraq. However, being Iraqi is a huge part of the artist's identity, so she made it her calling to help the Iraqi community. "A lot of people ask me why don't I go back to Iraq. Local people ask that too, having in mind this theory about immigrants taking the jobs and all. But most of all, Iraqi people ask that. They say: if you feel Iraqi, then go back! But if I go back, I will be just another citizen. From here, I am able to help Iraqi artists and raise awareness of women's right through art, but from there, I wouldn't be able to do anything. I have British citizenship now, having lived here for 18 years. So I am a proud Iraqi and a proud British".
