Wilde Power: Celebrating International Women’s Day

New works today to mark International Women’s Day from Iranian artist Aida Wilde, who has placed them on streets in London, Bristol, and Manchester. In black and white with accents of fire, she’s using her bold design sense and collaged text, and forms – including photographs of her mother’s and sister’s arms – to celebrate women’s power and history.

A visual artist, educator, and printmaker, she references the ironic pop fragmentation of slogans in a manner that recalls Jenny Holzer, an early street art social critic and proponent of women’s agency in society. You can see echoes of a street ad approach in Wilde’s previous screen-printed installations and social commentary posters, their replication, and repetition. In this work there is a direct relationship between Wilde’s “Power rarely falls within the right hands” and Holzer’s “Abuse of power comes as no surprise.”

Now based in the UK, Wilde fled Iran with her mother and sisters during her country’s war with Iraq and she is looking at the current theocratic suppression of the women’s popular movement in her home country with horror. It is a repetition of the tale of women’s fight for equality you have seen before, one that echoes through modern history, now playing out in new streets, schools, and educational and religious institutions. Using the balanced formation of the triptych, Wilde says the hands of her mother and sister “are raised in iconic gestures of resistance atop marble pedestals”.

In a statement about the new works on the street, Wilde says, “This is the first time that I have incorporated all of my family in one piece of artwork. This is for ALL the mothers, sisters, brothers, and fathers around the world, who have suffered oppression, violence, injustices, and bloodshed. May our tears and suffering not be in vain. May we be united by peace in the fight for justice.”