Artisanal typography is not just about creativity and it is not strictly about technique either. I have always thought that working with words was a responsibility that goes far beyond the visible.
Maybe it’s because here in the atelier, the letters touch each other, the alphabet really takes shape. Everything has a weight.
And what are words for if not to express oneself?
I often feel the need to put typographic art at the service of something bigger. I do it with the means and methods at my disposal. Paper, typefaces and ink are my best allies. And they are also allies to the thousands of women in Iran who have chosen to rebel, risking their lives. This is how the “Woman, Life, Freedom” poster was born.
“Only when the last prisoner of conscience is going to be freed, when the last torture chamber is closed, when the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights will be a reality for people around the world, then our work will be done.” Peter Benenson, Founder of Amnesty International
Arrests, violence, torture, death. This is what is happening to women in Iran.
WOMAN, LIFE, FREEDOM
Here in the West we probably heard the slogan “Woman, Life, Freedom” for the first time in the autumn of 2022, following protests over the death of Mahsa Amini in Iran.
But these three words were already protagonists of the Kurdish liberation movement, used as a means for the anti-capitalist and anti-patriarchal protests of the Women’s Protection Unit against the Islamic State (ISIS). But it is in 2022 that the slogan returns to the forefront, loud and clear. First sung at Amini’s funeral, on September 21 “Woman, life, freedom” was then used by students at the University of Tehran in the demonstrations and protests that broke out across the country in the following days.
I am a woman and I am a typographer: it would have been blind on my part not to allow my faithful Press machine to shout “Woman, life, freedom” together with the voices of Iranian youth.
In autumn 2022, over 20,000 people were arrested and subjected to torture, as a way of obtaining faux “confessions” to use as evidence during trials. (Source Amnesty International Italy). In the face of such atrocity we cannot remain silent. The Iranian population cannot be left alone to fight these injustices and any help is valid in the fight against this oppression of human rights.
As always, limited edition. There are 65 copies, inked and printed manually with typographic proofers, on handmade cotton paper from the Paper Museum in Mele (GE).
35×50 cm format, printed on fluorescent yellow paper. The wooden characters used come from a printing house in Florence.
