War Paint: documentary shines light on radical role of women artists
Margy Kinmonth’s latest film showcases 16 artists on the front lines of conflict and their powerful responses to war through art
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Throughout history it has been evident that war has no true victors. While humanity seems doomed to repeat the same mistake over and over, a new documentary posits that we look to women’s art to inspire a more peaceful future.
The British filmmaker Margy Kinmonth closes out her trilogy of films on artistic responses to conflict with War Paint — Women at War. It follows on from War Art with Eddie Redmayne (2015), which looked at the art born of the first world war, and Eric Ravilious — Drawn to War (2022), on the British painter’s response to the second world war.
War Paint looks to female artists from across the globe who use everything from textiles to photography and spray paint to call out the horrors of conflict. Though all the artists featured come from different countries and have their own unique aesthetic, the film showcases the strength of the collective.
The documentary commences in Venice at last year’s Biennale, which Kinmonth describes as “the Olympics of culture”. Alongside the gondolas and gelati there are constant reminders of war. Pro-Palestinian protesters chant outside the American Pavilion, Ukrainian artist Zhanna Kadyrova exhibits an organ made of spent ballistic missile casings used for war crimes, and the Israeli Pavilion is empty aside from a sign from the Israeli artist Ruth Patir explaining they will not exhibit until “a ceasefire and hostage release agreement is reached” in Gaza.
The film moves on from Venice and examines a series of global artists who explore how conflict impacts women in particular. Most of the 16 artists have direct civilian experiences of war zones.
Kinmoth largely acts as narrator as we hear her speak to the artists about their work and their inspirations. The film is arranged thematically, rather than chronologically, connecting artists through their approaches of memorialisation and depiction of violence or displacement.
Each living artist shows us their highest-profile work on war and explains their creative journey. Shirin Neshat, the Iranian artist and activist who now lives in exile in New York speaks about her work and the pain and vulnerability of Iranian women who have lived through a series of conflicts and restrictions of their rights.
“My work perpetually is about being deeply fragile, deeply vulnerable and deeply weak as a woman, but also defiant, strong, rebellious and resilient, which comes from being an Iranian woman,” she says. Her work combines paint and photography, often using images of her own face ornately decorated with script from female Iranian poets.
Neshat seeks to create art that contrasts a deep spiritual connection to Islam with the violence that many women have been subjected to in its name.
Jananne Al-Ani, born and raised in Iraq, takes a more autobiographical approach, examining the pervasive sense of dread and threat she lived through as a young woman. In the documentary we see how her family was divided when the Iraq-Iran war broke out in 1980, how she creates video art about the pain and shock of displacement, compiling footage of female family members reflecting on the cruelties they endured.
Another featured artist is Maggi Hambling, the renowned British painter, known for her portraits of female Muslim soldiers, including Gulf Women Prepare for War, made in response to the conflict in Iraq throughout the 1980s. Rather than focusing on political narratives, we learn how she emphasises human suffering and emotional trauma, critiquing the western media’s fascination with death. Her artistic response remains a poignant testament to the resilience of those forced to flee by war.
Moving to my home country of Sudan, in which conflict has displaced more than 11 million people, Kinmoth turns to Assil Diab, the self-described “rebellious” artist who in 2019 made a series of distinctive murals of Sudanese heroism that shone brightly on walls across Khartoum. Her most famous and beloved work was the Martyrs Project, which existed across the city and social media, commemorating those who were killed as they protested.
The documentary proves as paradoxical as the work Neshat describes at its start: utterly harrowing but strangely uplifting. Even in a world where humanity commits unspeakable acts on every corner of the globe — whether it’s Poland and Vietnam in decades past or Ukraine and Gaza today — art can provide a glimmer of hope and help us to understand just what is at stake when our leaders are war-hungry. Grim statistics read aloud by TV news anchors can only offer so much insight. But in War Paint, all of these extraordinary female artists are able to say something far more profound.
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