{"id":394,"date":"2026-03-02T15:26:19","date_gmt":"2026-03-02T14:26:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/grassrootsinsolidarity.com\/?page_id=394"},"modified":"2026-05-21T14:03:54","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T12:03:54","slug":"einleitung","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/einleitung\/","title":{"rendered":"Preface"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Preface<\/h1>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t
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Born in Bandar Abbas to an Iranian father and a German mother, the experience of migration, cultural diversity, and social upheaval continues to shape me to this day.<\/p>

After studying cinematography and earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in Islamic Studies, I pursued a degree in Visual Anthropology with a focus on people, nature, and the environment.<\/p>

However, my path was shaped not only by academic settings, but above all by encounters, travels, and observing solidarity in action.<\/p>

Through my travels and work in various social and political contexts, I was able to get to know numerous self-organized initiatives, grassroots movements, and solidarity networks. I was particularly influenced by feminist and community-oriented structures that emerged out of immediate necessity\u2014often quiet, improvised, and yet driven by great strength.<\/p>

Drawing on this experience, I founded a grassroots organization (Flamingo<\/a>) in Berlin in 2015 to support refugee women and children.<\/p>

Working in activist contexts has permanently changed my perspective on community, care, and resistance.<\/p>

I am particularly interested in forms of action that emerge beyond institutional visibility:<\/p>

people who quickly and intuitively take responsibility for one another, who share knowledge, pool resources, and act in close connection with their environment.<\/p>

Whether in community gardens, in women\u2019s villages they have built themselves, or in places being rebuilt after war and displacement:<\/p>

In all of them, I see spaces for healing, remembrance, and regeneration\u2014places where care, self-empowerment, and solidarity can be experienced in a tangible way.<\/p>

\u201cWomen in Solidarity\u201d is a growing platform where I have compiled my project visits into personal travelogues.<\/p>

It aims to encourage people to turn their attention to these quiet, powerful, and solidarity-driven movements and to provide financial support for these projects that do not receive institutional funding.<\/p>

I hope you enjoy reading it.<\/p>

Anuscheh Amir-Khalili<\/strong><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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About the illustrator<\/strong>:<\/p>

May Franzen (1998) is a visual artist, illustrator and activist working at the intersection of art, book design and ecological storytelling. Having grown up in St. Gallen, Switzerland, she developed a close relationship with animals and nature at an early age \u2013 shaped by many hours spent drawing and quietly observing non-human life. These experiences form the basis of a practice rooted in attentiveness, care and political witnessing.<\/p>

About the cover image<\/strong>:<\/p>

A valuable 17th-century Caucasian dragon carpet was reduced to large and small pieces when the Pergamon Museum in Berlin was bombed during the Second World War.<\/p>

When the museum reopens in 2027, its doppelg\u00e4nger will be on display as part of the permanent exhibition within the \u201cCultural x Collabs \u2013 Weaving the Future\u201d project. This was woven in 2022 by an Indian women\u2019s collective and subsequently divided into 100 carpet fragments, which travelled the world and whose recipients tell of the social connections, stories and experiences that bind us together.<\/p>

Fragment 76 highlights \u2018Women in Solidarity\u2019 and tells of the power of connection and the courage of communities to build places that reflect strength and solidarity.<\/p>

The cover image for \u201cwomen in solidarity\u201d is a redrawn version of Fragment #76. The fragments thrive on the solidarity that exists across the globe. The projects described here are also all interconnected; they are complemented by many others and continue to grow, spread, and draw strength and encouragement from one another, forming a network. They tell of the strength and courage of communities in building places that are bound together in solidarity.<\/p>

May Franzen painted her version of the fragment:<\/p>

\u201cTaking the photographic source as my starting point, I have tried not to copy the original weaving pattern directly, but to translate it into my own painterly language. To this end, I developed a watercolour technique that I see as a kind of \u2018painterly weaving\u2019: by layering horizontal and vertical lines in the primary colours of blue, yellow and red, and applying numerous transparent glazes, new shades of colour emerge. Where the lines overlap, visual \u2018knots\u2019 form, which formally recall the structure of a woven carpet.<\/p>

To me, these lines symbolise the multitude of humanitarian and feminist grassroots movements around the world \u2013 individual initiatives, projects and people who act independently of one another yet are connected. Through their interplay and interaction, they unleash a collective power. My image is therefore intended as a visualisation of a living network: \u201ca web of commitment, solidarity and mutual support which \u2013 despite a fragmented starting point \u2013 gives rise to a multi-layered, colourful unity.\u201d<\/p>

https:\/\/islamic-art.smb.museum\/en\/story\/cxc_fragment_76<\/a><\/p>

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\u00dcber das Projekt In Bandar – Abbas als Tochter eines iranischen Vaters und einer deutschen Mutter geboren, begleitet mich die Erfahrung von Migration, kultureller Vielschichtigkeit und gesellschaftlichen Umbr\u00fcchen bis heute. Nach meinem Studium der Kamera sowie einem Bachelor in Islamwissenschaften habe ich Visuelle Anthropologie mit dem Schwerpunkt Mensch, Natur und Umwelt studiert. Gepr\u00e4gt wurde mein […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-394","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":798,"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/394\/revisions\/798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/womeninsolidarity.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}