Art Works Projects

06/01/2026

Here at the Oslo Freedom Forum an endless inspiration of art and protest - this exhibition makes each one of us a participant in ending tyranny.

06/01/2026

Carmen Lau has a $1,000,000 bounty on her head - placed there by the Hong Kong authorities who are frightened by the demands of Carmen and her colleagues for the right to participate in their own government. Rather than stand down, Carmen has just stood up on this stage and so many others and confirmed her commitment to protest.

06/01/2026

“Silence, indifference, and accommodation” assist tyranny. Words spoken today at the opening of the as Art in Protest exhibition is opened with the work behind the doors created by artists who have been silenced but who are heard. Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara, the Gao Brothers, Song Byeok, Zehra Dogan, Pedro X. Molina, Azza Abo Rebieh, and Reyma Suprani have been censored - but they are here for this vibrant discussion of global human rights.

05/22/2026

Photo by Jean Chung

As we enter the summer of 2026, we at ART WORKS Projects are reminded that it will soon be five years since the take over by the current Taliban-led government. Since August 15, 2021, 20 million Afghan women and girls have lived under increasingly draconian strictures and have had their right to learn, work, speak, travel, move, and simply exist curtailed in an extraordinary manner. These rules, laid out by a vast number of edicts, are enforced with violence and fear, and yet - Afghan women and their allies continue to advocate for themselves.

Art Works Projects began its work with Afghan women under the “Women Between Peace and War: Afghanistan” exhibition, created in 2012 with Afghan women leaders and UN Women. Since that time, their world has changed, and many rights illustrated in the exhibition are now lost - but not forgotten.

“The Sharp Edge of Peace”, produced by MIRA Studios & Roya Film House, showcases the continuing the high-stakes efforts of Afghan women to advocate in global policy settings. AWP is pleased to see our exhibition presented in collaboration with select film screenings and is committed to continuing to demand that Afghan women and girls are provided the rights they, and all of us, are due. Recent installations such the one hosted by Luxembourg’s Permanent Mission to the UN during the Commission on the Status of Women provide an opportunity to engage with diplomatic leaders who can and should be committed to change.

05/22/2026

Photo by Jean Chung

As we enter the summer of 2026, we at ART WORKS Projects are reminded that it will soon be five years since the take over by the current Taliban-led government. Since August 15, 2021, 20 million Afghan women and girls have lived under increasingly draconian strictures and have had their right to learn, work, speak, travel, move, and simply exist curtailed in an extraordinary manner. These rules, laid out by a vast number of edicts, are enforced with violence and fear, and yet - Afghan women and their allies continue to advocate for themselves.

Art Works Projects began its work with Afghan women under the "Women Between Peace and War: Afghanistan" exhibition, created in 2012 with Afghan women leaders and UN Women. Since that time, their world has changed, and many rights illustrated in the exhibition are now lost - but not forgotten.

"The Sharp Edge of Peace", produced by MIRA Studios & Roya Film House, showcases the continuing the high-stakes efforts of Afghan women to advocate in global policy settings. AWP is pleased to see our exhibition presented in collaboration with select film screenings and is committed to continuing to demand that Afghan women and girls are provided the rights they, and all of us, are due. Recent installations such the one hosted by Luxembourg's Permanent Mission to the UN during the Commission on the Status of Women provide an opportunity to engage with diplomatic leaders who can and should be committed to change.

Women and girls are the cornerstone to rebuilding peace in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. The eroding effects of gender inequality, poverty, and lack of access to healthcare and education, however, have become the abhorrent and seemingly impermeable mainstays in many women’s lives. Establishing A...

03/25/2026

Through “The Invincibles in Plastic Recycling,” our 2023-2024 Emerging Lens Fellow, Edwin Ndeke, documents the daily reality of workers, those fighting for both livable conditions and a livable planet, who are essential to our collective survival yet remain marginalized: the paradox of an industry built on their labor that refuses them basic rights. 

On March 8, The Guardian published Edwin’s photo essay, “Life on Kenya’s largest dump: the invisible workers sorting the world’s rubbish”: https://bit.ly/4tb82Ht. 

For two years, has been photographing the waste pickers who scale trash mountains to recover vast amounts of plastic and recyclables that would otherwise release methane in landfills. They enable corporations to meet reduction targets. They are, quite literally, on the frontlines of climate action.

On March 30th, we invite you to join AWP and Alliance Française Nairobi for the debut of Edwin’s exhibition “Unseen Frontliners: Nairobi’s Informal Workers Addressing Plastic Waste.” Aligning with UN International Day of Zero Waste, this exhibition runs through April 10, 2026. On opening day, join Edwin for a panel discussion along with representatives from , and . Together, they will examine the gaps in mainstream media coverage of waste and plastic pollution and how community-led photography is reclaiming the narrative.

As Emerging Lens Fellowship celebrates its 10th anniversary, it is work like Edwin’s that reminds us why long-form, community-centered storytelling matters. Continue to support community-centered storytelling at artworksprojects.org/support-our-work/.

03/09/2026

While concluded on March 8, we continue to honor Women’s History Month, amplifying women’s contributions to history, culture and society.

In the neighborhood of Chatham and across Chicago’s South Side, creativity has never been absent; it has been underfunded, overlooked, and stripped of the infrastructure it deserves. The legacy of a once-thriving public darkroom, in the grassroots networks of artists and organizers who have kept culture alive without institutional support lives on through The Darkroom Chicago. is a Black mom-owned community darkroom on the South Side that is revitalizing analog photography as a medium for storytelling, education, and economic opportunity through a space of creativity and care.

Last summer, AWP partnered with The Darkroom Chicago with a loan of over 300 archived exhibition prints, now housed at the Tuley Park Cultural Center, where the team, lead by Rosondunnii “Rose” Marshall, leads workshops and teach-ins for community members.

For Rose, “International Women’s Day reminds [her] how powerful it is when women lead spaces rooted in care, creativity, and community. [She is] grateful to be alongside women doing meaningful work in photography—using their vision to connect people, shift perspectives, and build something bigger than ourselves.”

Image 1: Rose Marshall and teaching artist
Image 2: Workshop participant in a darkroom pop-up event.
Image 3: Rose with AWP Summer Interns for a print viewing workshop, June 2025.
Image 4: Rose with AWP Board Member , accepting the “Community Pillar” Award during The Darkroom’s Inaugural Gala, November 2025.

Photo credits: F/8TE Productions ()

03/08/2026

Today, on International Women’s Day, we honor the countless women who have been displaced in the face of conflict, and the women and men who show up to document the long-term impacts of war. 

Since the 2021 Taliban takeover, Afghan women and girls have faced the systematic erasure of fundamental rights like being removed from jobs, barred from school, and restricted from travel. In 2011, AWP produced “Women Between Peace and War: Afghanistan,” an international awareness campaign to ensure that the voices of women and girls were not lost amid the international military and political engagement in Afghanistan. 

In collaboration with UN Women and international photographers  Lynsey Addario, Paula Bronstein, Jean Chung, Ron Haviv, Jared Moosey, Moises Saman, Stephanie Sinclair, Abbie Trayler-Smith, Veronique de Viguerie, and Farzana Wahidy, this campaign offered a visual reinforcement of Afghan women as powerful community actors in establishing peace. Only then can a shared vision of harmony, balance, and freedom ensue. Investment in women is an investment in peace.  

Today, the voices and stories of these women need our attention as they face unimaginable violence, discrimination, and hardships. 

This year’s theme is ; For 20 years, that’s exactly what AWP has strived to accomplish in partnership with the many collaborators and supporters connecting visibility, voice, and resources to the storytellers who refuse to let the world look away. Because when we invest in women’s stories, we all gain.

Cover image: Amina (13) surrounded by her classmates in burqas at a center where she learned to read and write.
Jean Chung, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2006.

03/07/2026

As we continue celebrating , we celebrate the trusting bonds that form between women who hold the camera and the women who choose to stand in front of it.

2024 Emerging Lens Fellow Natalia Favre is an Argentinian photographer and visual storyteller based in Cuba and Argentina whose work explores the intersection of community, identity, and territory across Latin America. Through her project “Maloneras: Seeds of Resistance,” Natalia brings us the story of Aurora Choque, an indigenous activist from Jujuy, a remote province located in the northwest region of Argentina. Jujuy is home to 274 indigenous communities, which have been increasingly affected by challenges related to mega mining activities and political persecution, threatening their land rights and disrupting traditional livelihoods.

This relationship with Aurora did not form overnight, but from patient and sustained trust that she had a storytelling partner in Natalia. Thanks to a National Geographic Explorer’s grant, Natalia will be able to expand her project from AWP into a larger survey of indigenous populations at odds with competing interests for land and resources across the Andean ridge.  

According to a June 3, 2025 article in the LatAm Journalism Review, “while World Press Photo has recorded a slight increase in submissions from women, there is still a long way to go to achieve gender parity. For the 2024 edition, some 77 percent of participants identified as men and only 22 percent as women—a 3-point increase from 2021, when 19 percent of entries came from people who identified as women.” 

At AWP, we’re proud to have maintained strong representation of women through our Emerging Lens Fellowship, providing unrestricted grants, mentorship, and hands-on support to early-career photographers whose voices are too often overlooked and underplatformed. When we invest in who holds the camera, we invest in the stories told. 

Image 1: A selfie of Natalia and Aurora
Images 2-3: Images of Natalia, taken by Aurora
Image 4: Aurora drawing spring water from the Coranzuli River, Argentina, 2024.

03/06/2026

This International Women’s Day, we’re celebrating the women who hold the camera and the women who choose to stand in front of it. 

All eyes have been on the war in Iran, as news reports indicate airstrikes have killed hundreds of civilians since the start of the bombings across major cities. As history repeats itself, the attitudes of military leaders remain constant: civilian deaths are wartime collateral. 

Today, we highlight the work of 2023 Emerging Lens Fellow, Astrig Agopian, a French-Lebanese-Armenian journalist, documentary photographer, and filmmaker, whose work focuses on the intersection between geopolitics, territory, marginality and memory. She documents identity struggles, human rights issues and long-term consequences of conflicts, mainly covering Europe, the South Caucasus and the Middle East. Her project, “Like There’s No Tomorrow,” zeroes in on the voices of forcibly displaced Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, amplifying stories of resilience as this population faces cultural erasure.

As a woman reporting in conflict zones, has experienced harassment, threats, and the persistent barrier of not being taken seriously — “making it even harder to get information.” But she continues, driven by the conviction that “documenting and giving people a voice is all that matters.” 

Astrig’s project reminds us why programs like Emerging Lens must center access, safety, and aftercare as critical support components to the work we do together.