Hannah Rose Thomas’ ‘Tears of Gold’ and the Empathetic Power of Art
Plough Publishing House
Artist and human rights activist Hannah Rose Thomas has recently published an art book, “Tears of Gold,” which is filled with painted portraits of women who had escaped violence in their respective countries.
The majority of Thomas’ work focuses on Yazidi women who survived the Islamic State group, Rohingya women who escaped the onslaught of Muslims in Myanmar and Nigerian women who suffered at the hands of Boko Haram.
The final chapter contains portraits and words from Afghan, Ukrainian, Ughyur and Palestinian women. The book also contains self-portraits of these women, along with their own words.
READ: ‘The Augustine Way’ And Other Book Considerations For March
The goal behind the book is to inspire empathy and compassion for these women through the portraits within. Art, because of its contemplative nature, can help foster these things, which Thomas believes are easy to shake loose in modern society.
“Art is born of contemplation,” she told Religion Unplugged. “of intense concentration and care (and) therefore can create the space necessary for others to contemplate.”
She added: “I believe that nothing is more important than compassion for another’s suffering. But I think that we can sometimes become inured to the pain and injustice in the world with the constant influx of negative news and images in the media. My paintings are an attempt to recreate a face-to-face encounter of sorts, a reminder of the individuals at the heart of these humanitarian crises, which often seem so distant and at times difficult to relate to.”
Thomas was born in Italy and spent most of her childhood in England. She quickly developed an interest in art and travel, which underpinned her motivation for getting her undergraduate degree in history and Arabic from Durham University.
This led her to live in Jordan for some time, where she began to organize art projects with Syrian refugees in the area.
This experience, she said, “opened (her) eyes to the magnitude of the refugee crisis confronting our world today.”
“I began to paint the portraits of some of the refugees I had met, to show the people behind the global crisis, whose personal stories are otherwise often shrouded by statistics.”
Since then, she has continued to work in humanitarian projects, organizing art workshops with women in asylum-seeking communities all around the world. Many of these women are from religious minority groups in their respective regions.
For Thomas, art has a certain restorative power, and can serve as a catalyst for change as well as advocacy. This is why she encouraged the women to paint self-portraits.
Hannah Rose Thomas (handout photo)
“Although I am not trained as an art therapist, I came to experience this personally, as painting was part of my own healing journey from trauma,” she said. “I believe that trauma-healing for individuals helps to promote peace and to pave the way for social transformation after decades of war.”
The title for the book was inspired by the golden leaf painting technique of the Yazidi women in one of Thomas’ art workshops in Iraqi Kurdistan. Thomas had crowdfunded her trip and traveled with a clinical psychologist to the Middle East, where she taught the women how to paint themselves.
“The purpose of the art project was to teach the women how to paint their self-portraits as a way to share their stories with the rest of the world,” Thomas said. “It was the first time many had ever drawn or painted in their lives. The women chose to paint their tears in gold to convey their grief for loved ones lost or still in captivity.”
After watching the women use the gold paint in their self-portraits, Thomas used the same technique in many of her own portraits. For her, the technique helps communicate the value of the individual.
“As a portrait painter, I hope to convey the sacred value of each individual regardless of race, religion, or gender,” she writes. “This is especially important in light of the genocidal violence these (women) have endured. The use of gold leaf in my portraits of displaced women and survivors of conflict-related sexual violence is symbolic of this sacredness regardless of what they have suffered.”
“Tears of Gold” also asks the reader a more practical question: how would the world be different if we treated each individual as if they were made in the image of God? That is, if each human being had equal value and dignity before God?
Thomas writes that “we would be obliged to treat each other on the highest ethical grounds — to approach one another in reverence and respect.”
Thomas also mentions the Irish poet John O’Donohue and his definition of the art of reverence in this respect, which he believes is “dignified attention of body showing that the sacred is already here.”
Rafa Oliveira previously worked as an intern at Religion Unplugged. He currently freelances for The Fix and is a legal policy and research intern at the Pacific Legal Foundation.