Zehra Doğan: Light and Fight

The Fondazione MACC – Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Calasetta presents Light and Fight, the first Sardinian solo exhibition of Kurdish artist, journalist, and activist Zehra Doğan, curated by Valentina Lixi and presented by Efisio Carbone. Doğan’s work transforms confinement into a laboratory of memory, clandestinity into a space of expression, and vulnerability into a political and poetic language.

The exhibition features paintings, installations, photographs, and videos, often created with improvised materials collected in prison—bedsheets, newspaper, coffee, pomegranate peels, ash, hair, feathers—transformed into acts of resistance and collective memory. Hidden under beds or among clothing to evade surveillance, each work embodies courage, solidarity, and the power of artistic testimony.

Light and Fight also highlights Doğan’s residency in Calasetta, part of the Laboratorio Mediterraneo program, where she collaborated with Sardinian artisans to integrate traditional carpets into her work. These textiles become narrative surfaces, weaving together local craftsmanship, cultural memory, and the artist’s voice, creating works that connect the personal and the collective, the local and the global.

Through this exhibition, Doğan’s practice speaks to the resilience of human expression under repression and the potential of art to transform constraint into a platform for dialogue, remembrance, and international cultural exchange.