Owanto's Renewed Flowers

When we say that art is a powerful tool for change, this is what we mean.

Gabonese-French artist, Owanto, shows us what it’s like for up to 200 million girls and women across about 30 countries who have been cut during Female Genital Mutilation (FGM). FGM is an old tradition, done as a rite to signify the passing of girlhood to womanhood, but by cutting parts of the vagina to curb sexual pleasure. FGM is a traumatising act with many organisations and women now speaking up against it. But the practice persists.

In this Flowers series, Owanto uses archived photos of the girls during an FGM ceremony in a village, digitised and reprinted large scale on aluminium plates. In an act of empathy and consolation, she covers up their faces and vulnerable cut areas with beautiful, large, sculpted porcelain flowers, jutting dramatically (and rightly so) out of the plates. It’s almost as if she’s making the girls’ ‘flowers’ whole again

Watch this beautiful short film about Flowers, and see some of the art below.