A voice for the voiceless: Diane Victor's representation of migrant women in Suie et cendre (Soot and ashes) (2024-2025)

Arts activisms and gender-based violence through transnational perspectives

Abstract

Diane Victor is a white female South African artist who, through her work, has stood up for victims of abuse, such as domestic violence and atrocities, which arguably, most consistently affect the lives of women. Victor’s exhibition Suie et cendre (Soot and ashes) (2024-2025, LAAC Gallery, Dunkirk, France) responds to the plight of displaced francophone women from Africa and Iran residing in Dunkirk. The ongoing global news coverage of the ‘migrant problem’ has resulted in many extreme views about migrants, but Victor engaged with these women directly through a photovoice project aligning with the current decolonial feminist ethos to grant agency and voice to migrants themselves. This article analyses selected examples from the LAAC exhibition to show how close engagement with the migrants has influenced Victor’s working method and iconography. I argue that Victor’s photovoice project provides a platform for marginalised and suppressed voices to be heard, suggesting that their further exploitation is avoided by employing metaphorical imagery, created with ash and smoke, that responds to their stories with compassion and sensitivity. Furthermore, I suggest that the mythical aspects of Victor’s drawings, where meaning resides as much in material and method as in her iconography, encourage an empathic response in viewers.