Red Woman

In 2023, AFI commissioned Jahan Ara Rafi to design five original works for our report “Artistic Exodus”. In an ode to the experiences of suppression and forced migration affecting Afghan women under the Taliban, “Red Woman” is centered on a female figure with her mouth covered or obscured, a reference to the limitations and “silence” imposed on women throughout history and into the present. Rafi paints in deep crepuscular shades of red, gold, blues, and purples to evoke the twilight hour following a sunset, a symbol of the shrinking horizons of Afghan women under Taliban rule.