Meet The Dissidents
Pam Isherwood
Esteemed veteran photojournalist, Pam Isherwood is a member of National Union of Journalists and was a founding member of Format Photographers, an all woman agency established in 1963. The agency was committed to highlighting issues, events and individuals often overlooked by mainstream media, while also promoting female photographers in the male-dominated industry. Her experence is vast, including documenting Extinction Rebellion gatherings, Pride celebrations and many human rights protests spanning decades.
She is currently in ‘The 80’s, Photographing Britain’ in Tate Britain, ending on May 5th, and is also featured in the Tate Modern exhibition ‘Women in Revolt’, currently at the Whitworth Gallery Manchester until June 1st.
She is also a founding member of the HOWL collective, documenting the history of the female liberation movement from the 1960’s to the 1990’s.
We are delighted and moved to have her with us documenting this world first event.
Maryam Namazie
Maryam Namazie is an Iranian-born campaigner and writer and Spokesperson of Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain and One Law for All. She is the instigator behind the Celebrating Dissent conferences, the largest gatherings of ex-Muslims in history since 2014. In his 2020 book ‘Leaving the Allah Delusion Behind: Atheism and Freethought in Islam’, Ibn Warraq documents atheism in Islam and the rising ex-Muslim movement. In it he writes, ‘If it were not for Maryam Namazie’s tireless efforts, I doubt if the ex-Muslim atheist movement as a whole would have had the success it is experiencing now.’ During decades of activism, Maryam has organised numerous actions, including #Hair4Freedom and #BodyRiot in support of women in Iran, executive produced Women Leaving Islam and published The Woman’s Quran. The Islamic regime of Iran’s media outlets have called Namazie ‘immoral, a harlot and corrupt’. Her TedX talk on ‘Creativity in Challenging Islamic Fundamentalism’ was censored and labelled ‘distressing and objectionable.’ Namazie has faced many attempts at censorship, including by Warwick University Student Union and Goldsmiths Islamic Society. Maryam and the CEMB have been featured in a 2016 film by Deeyah Khan called ‘Islam’s Non-Believers.’ She was also a character in DV8 Physical Theatre’s ‘Can We Talk About This?’ She is the winner of numerous awards, including IBKA Sapio award (2022), the 2017 Henry H. Zumach Freedom From Religious Fundamentalism award; 2016 International Laicite Prize from the Comité Laïcité République; the National Secular Society’s Secularist of the Year Award (2005); and the Julia B. Friedman Humanitarian Award (1987). She has written numerous articles on women’s rights issues, free expression, Islamism, and secularism in various media outlets and co-authored Sharia Law in Britain: A Threat to One Law for All and Equal Rights (One Law for All, June 2010), Enemies Not Allies: The Far-Right (One Law for All, August 2011), and The Political and Legal Status of Apostates in Islam (CEMB, August 2017).
Claudia Clare
Claudia Clare is a feminist artist who makes large painterly pots. She trained as a painter but transferred to pots finding the turning surface sympathetic to an unfolding visual narrative. She says, 'Pots are our museum pieces, our archaeological and documentary evidence. Their human, cultural and historic associations connect well to the work I do interpreting women’s histories and contemporary lives.' Some of her pots are broken and lovingly rebuilt - a compelling metaphor for the human experience of trauma and survival and one she deploys particularly in her feminist work.
Track record:
Ceramics: A working artist for 40 years, Claudia has exhibited widely in the UK and had her first international solo show in Warsaw in 2023, showcasing her feminist and satirical work, most of which caused controversy in the UK resulting in a succession of cancelled exhibitions and events from 2010-2023.
Curation: 'Vice & Virtue,' Ruup & Form, London, 2023 explored the growing religiosity and fanaticism of 'progressive' social justice movements. It was the first time a UK art gallery had shown sex realist/gender critical feminist art.
Publications: 'Subversive Ceramics,' Bloomsbury, 2016 and 'The Pot Book,' co-authored with Edmund de Waal, Phaidon, 2011. She is now researching a new book on 21st century, visual arts censorship in the UK.
Public Collections:
Women’s Arts Collection, Cambridge
Cartwright Hall, Manchester
The Pankhurst Centre, Manchester
Con-She
Con-she is a Glaswegian booze-n-fagz-guzzling Pierrot.
Her name is a play on words – ‘with her’ as well as ‘conscientious objector,’ and her artist statement is: “Art must be free to be nuanced, complex, and un-didactic.”
She has shown work in New York with Passion for Freedom, and in London at both Not For Sale Gallery and Ruup&Form.
Con-she’s output is varied, and includes video works; neons; a Manifesto for Humans: On Art, Writing, and Life; and an application for the job of Wellcome Collection’s DEI manager.
Ibitassme Betty Lachgar
Ibtissame Betty Lachgar is a nomad activist and feminist from Morocco. She is a clinical psychologist specialising in Criminology and Victimology. Betty Lachgar works on issues relating to male sexist and sexual violence against women and girls. In 2009, she founded the Alternative Movement for Individual Liberties (M.A.L.I.) in Morocco, which is a civil disobedience feminist laic movement fighting against patriarchy and socio-religious inquisition, for women’s rights, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, sexual and reproductive health as abortion rights…
To get their messages across, Betty organises creative actions and campaigns and also gives conferences.
As a result of her activism, she has been the target of harassment, intimidation and threats, as well as arbitrary arrests and prosecution. She is also highly censured for her opinions and position statements.
In 2024, she received a Champion Of Good Award (NGO Category) from ACT Responsible at the Cannes Lions, the most important event for creative excellence in the word.
Caren Garfen
Caren Garfen is an award-winning artist renowned for her meticulous hand stitching and thought-provoking work. She transforms everyday objects into powerful symbols, carefully crafting pieces that convey profound messages.
Caren's artistic practice has long focussed on gender politics and women’s issues in the 21st century, exploring themes such as work-life balance and body image.
Rachel Ara
Rachel Ara (b. 1965) is an internationally recognised sculptor and conceptual artist. She studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths (1994–97) and is known for creating large-scale works that are provocative, witty, and technically ambitious with a strong feminist perspective. Ara fabricates all her own pieces, drawing on her 30-year background as a computer systems designer and her training as a cabinetmaker.
In 2019, Ara faced public backlash after liking a tweet that questioned gender ideology. The incident led to a wave of professional repercussions, including the cancellation of commissions, withdrawal of funding, and the loss of lecturing opportunities. Effectively ostracised from the mainstream art world for having an opinion, she continues to pursue her practice independently, staying true to her own vision.
As well as winning international awards, her work has been exhibited in major museums worldwide, including the MAK in Vienna, MMCA in Seoul, the V&A, Whitechapel Gallery, and the Barbican Centre, and is currently held in the permanent collection of the V&A.
Jenny Wenhammar
Jenny Wenhammar is an activist, artist and behavioural scientist.
Jenny’s art focuses on the female body in society, advocating for women’s autonomy and freedom.
Jenny wrote her first op-ed condemning the Church’s power, corruption, and hypocrisy. Her life has been marked by a strong stance against theocracy, patriarchy, and abuse. Jenny’s family history includes religious persecution: Her ancestor, Elisabeth Målares, was beheaded and burned as a witch by her own son, a priest, Jenny’s forefather, who led the witch hunts. As a teenager, Jenny lived with an Opus Dei family in Venezuela, deepening her understanding of extreme conservative religious mindsets.
Jenny Reilly
Jenny Reilly is a self taught textile artist who uses her craft to document the fight for sex-based rights in the UK. As an active member of the Women Won’t Wheesht Group, she advocates for women in Scotland to have access to single sex spaces.
Reilly’s art incorporates traditional textile methods like embroidery, appliqué and needle felting, creating pieces that connect contemporary issues with historical narratives.
Jenny’s art highlights women who have been penalised for their sex realist views, providing a platform for their voices and fostering dialogue on the implications of silencing women.
Khadija Khan
Khadija Khan is a journalist and commentator based in the UK. She writes for different publications, focusing on human rights, mainly women’s rights, as well as minorities and extremism.
Elly Arrow
Elly Arrow is a driven activist against the commercial sex trade with multiple projects behind her, including founding Red Light Exposé, exposing the horrors of the commercial sex industry with survivors and allies alike. A highly talented multimedia artist and speaker with a Bachelors of Art and Design, she uses both her body as a canvas and her sculpting prowess for her own personal healing and liberation, on top of her essential work tackling prostitution worldwide.
Nordic Model Now!
Founded in March 2016, Nordic Model Now! is a secular, feminist, grassroots women’s group based in the UK that is campaigning for the abolition of prostitution and related practices.
The group includes a number of women who have lived experience of the sex trade.
Shelley Segal
Shelley Segal is an award winning EDM artist and atheist folk singer songwriter, her work has been platformed in multiple atheist and secular events worldwide. After coming into atheistm at 18, she writes about sex segregation in religion and from her perspective as a former Judaist believer, and is a humanist.
The Pomidor Group
The Pomidor group is an artist duo formed by Polina and Maria in Moscow in 2018. Their practice merges sewing, socially engaged methods, and public street art. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Polina relocated to London and Maria to Tel Aviv, leaving due to their rejection of the political regime, the war, and increasing censorship.
They both graduated from art institutions: Polina from Stroganov State University of Arts and Industry, and Maria from the School of Industrial Arts. They met at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Moscow.
Their recent work addresses societal silence in response to political violence. In 2024, their London exhibition was canceled on opening day following social media posts in support of Israel and the hostages.
Flags are central to their practice — as symbols of both belonging and resistance. They hover between visibility and disappearance, between statement and silence. The artists projected their flags onto buildings in Tel Aviv and Ashkelon. They also showed paper versions of their works in phone booths in London.
Over the past two years, their works have been presented in private galleries and institutions around the world: the USA, UK, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Before 2022, they exhibited at various institutions such as the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Vinzavod Center for Contemporary Art, Fabrica Center for Contemporary Art, and The Wrong 4th Biennale of Digital Art.
Jenny Lindsay
Jenny Lindsay is a writer, poet and essayist based in Scotland. She is the author of two full-length and two pamphlet poetry collections, two poetry/ theatre stage-shows, and has produced commissioned work across poetry, prose, and theatre for numerous publications and institutions. Her film-poem The Imagined We won the inaugural John Byrne Award for Critical Thinking in 2020. Hounded: Women, Harms and the Gender Wars (Polity: 2024) is her debut non-fiction book and documents the psychological, social, economic and democratic harms being inflicted on women who oppose gender identity ideology. Hounded out of her former livelihood as a live literature programmer, Jenny turned to non-fiction to critical acclaim, with JK Rowling saying that “(her) book will rightly be seen as one of the definitive chronicles of these times.” Despite this, she has not been invited to any literature festival in the UK and remains ostracised from literary opportunities in Scotland.
Fanny Graham aka Tiny Haunts
Fanny Graham (also known as Tiny Haunts) is a miniaturist and dioramist whose work explores tiny, detailed worlds in a variety of mediums. A self-taught Pandemic hobbyist, she found solace and creative purpose during the 2020 lockdowns, though her interest was first ignited in 2019 when she discovered sculpture through air-dry clay by chance.
Influenced and inspired by a passion for film, especially the elevated horror genre and the miniatures featured in 2018’s Hereditary, her creations are marked by quiet intensity and haunting, atmospheric intricacy. Politics and personal experiences also now shape her work, which has begun to explore themes of survival, resilience and resistance, reflecting a commitment to freedom of expression and the importance and power of women’s voices. She will continue using her art to document the defence of women’s rights, to our single-sex spaces and to our language.
Fanny’s journey with art has not been without hardship. After enduring a targeted and sustained campaign of harassment from a misogynist man which derailed her career with an institutionally captured employer and almost destroyed her creative spirit, she found renewed strength through the supportive networks of women’s rights activism, with special thanks to Virago. Her work today stands as a testament to resilience, defiance and the healing power of art. Creating remains a grounding and sustaining force for her – a form of survival through the aftermath of personal Male Violence Against Women and Girls (MVAWG) experiences - and her work honours women’s voices and the right to speak freely despite immense pressure.
Through her miniature scenes, Fanny pays tribute to women’s survival, voices and stories and honours the fight against fierce and hostile attacks from aggressive ideologues who are relentless in their attempts to silence us.
Genevieve Moon
Genevieve Moon is a radical poet and artist hailing from the North. Her work encompasses themes of radical womanhood, survival and liberation. She is a member of The Poetry of the Furies feminist poetry collective and is also a participant in the brand project, Painted Powerful, getting its world Premiere at Women Create!
Rebecca Mordan
After graduating from Bristol Old Vic and working in film, theatre and television, Rebecca became disillusioned by the dearth of roles and opportunities for women.
A dynamic and enterprising artist, she created her own company to try and ‘level the playing field’, populating stories with fascinating, diverse female characters; and rescuing amazing women from the wastelands of history.
Rebecca has been intimately involved with every aspect of SLG, writing, directing, producing and performing to take the company from strength to strength. She co-founded the Greenham Women Everywhere project leading to a book and radio 4 documentary and is a recent graduate of the BBC Writers Room. She is still a grassroots campaigner against male violence and a frequent guest expert on BBC Radio and Sky News.
We are proud to be platforming artworks from the RLE podcast, an international collective of sex trade survivors and allies who are lifting up marginalised voices critical of sex work ideology. Frequently hounded and abused for their views, their artwork is a crucial expression of women who understand the realities of the sex trade industries, and are using their voices and creative expression for regaining their bodily autonomy, and fighting back.
Shabbana
For most of her career, Shabbana worked in Education. From Classroom Teacher to Deputy Head but she left all that behind for pastures new. The space and time have provided her with the much needed opportunity to devote her energies to creative pursuits.
Her art and life are inspired by Folklore, Paganism and the Mystical. She is a women’s rights activist and an ex-Muslim, having left the faith in pursuit of her own freedom. The art she is showing in this exhibition in part represents that journey.
Valérie Tender
Valérie Tender, is a survivor of sexual exploitation from Montréal, Canada. She was stuck in the sex industry for 6 years, from the ages of 16 to 23 years old, and her porn sick father was her driver through most of it. She is now 44 years old. Valérie is a radical feminist with an international reach in her activism. She is also a singer, a conceptual artist and a social entrepreneur. She has had experiences working as a counselor in a homeless shelter as well as helping other fellow women durably leave the sex trade, unpack their experiences and rebuild themselves an identity other than that of servicing males. She works from a trauma-informed perspective. After this conference, Valérie embarks on a European speaking tour spanning over 32 days in 7 countries. She will be doing the pedagogy of Why we need to abolish prostitution in the 4 languages she speaks; French, English, Spanish and Portuguese, making this a multilingual tour. She truly believes in the need to internationalize our fight and have the same abolitionist laws everywhere on earth.
Heli St Luce AKA Maxi Mc Naughty
A part of Nordic Model Now!, Heli St Luce originally trained as an actor and is an activist who has been working for over three decades, primariy with women to facilitate internal change for a more female focussed and friendly society.
Beginning as a woman’s self defence tutor, adding modalities and incorporating them into a holistic framework, she uses pseudonyms for different areas of her mission.
Her alter ego is Maxi McNaughty, warrior for the Goddess (planet Earth) holding (tuff love) space to promote “Planetary Change Through Personal Practices” such as “Earth Based Rituals”, song and healing circles. Her craft incorporates singing, spoken word, ceremony guidings and teachings.
Modalities: Aromatherapy, EFT, Theta Healing® reiki 1 & 2, Silent and Co Counselling, Psychology of Vision, Somatic Internal Family Systems, massage and reflexology.
Heli will be guiding “Groomed!” a radical workshop for survivors to reclaim their bodies, and rise rooted.
Pauline Makoveitchoux
An esteemed feminist activist and photographer, Pauline creates photographic works that entail women taking to the streets and being unafraid to take up public space. Her work is confrontational, electric and radical. In a world where women are being banned and policed in public life from Paris to Iran and Afghanistan, her work is more vital than ever.
Angela Wild
Angela C. Wild is a Lesbian feminist activist, a political artist and a writer.
Unapologetic Radical Feminist, her work focuses on promoting uncompromising Lesbian visibility, building Lesbian culture, fighting for women-only-spaces as well as challenging patriarchal institutions such as compulsory heterosexuality, compulsory motherhood, sexual violence in all its forms and pornography.
A direct action activist, she has co-organised some of the most visible action for lesbians rights in the last decade.
A former founder member of the Lesbian grassroots activist group Get The L Out UK, she is the author of the first research on the Cotton Ceiling “Lesbians at Ground Zero”, and the creator of Wild Womyn Workshop, radical feminist shop for activists.
Her written works feature in Spinning and Weaving: Radical Feminism for the 21st Century. She is a frequent Women’s Declaration International contributor. Her work was featured in ‘Banner Culture’, exhibition and book by British textile biennale, ‘Screech’ and ‘Rain and Thunder’.
Esmée Streachailt
Esmée Streachailt, PhD, was quietly cancelled by an academy grown hostile to sexual difference/cultural feminism. She spent her life teaching, working in various corners of justice movements for women, and in the vibrant renaissance of civic and protest poetics in the US. She joined The Radical Notion collective at its inception, writing for the magazine and editing contributions. Esmée is now the founder/editor of Medusa Rising, a radical materialist feminist project seeking to publish and connect feminists and women's movement internationally to amplify our efforts to build another world.
Vaishnavi Sundar
Vaishnavi Sundar is an Indian filmmaker, writer and women’s rights advocate. All her films champion women from various walks of life, including radically acclaimed grassroots films “Dysphoric” and “Behind the Looking Glass.”
Kelly Frost
Kelly is a feminist artist specialising in puppet making. Her work ranges from intricate works utilising vintage pictures & other created & found objects, to crafting puppets with a whimsical feel.
Selkie Stitching
Selkies Stitching is a small collective of women from Edinburgh and the surrounding Lothians using artistic and textile skills to support women fighting an ideological threat to women’s rights and to child safeguarding.
Most of us met first in 2021 at protests outside the Scottish parliament. We later began meeting covertly in the back room of pubs or for usually freezing picnics in Princes Street Gardens, and through these became part of a growing Scotland-wide network.
In early 2022, a small number of us became an arts collective with the aim of pitting our wits and talents together to design and stitch banners that we hoped would 100 years from now be in a museum, held in the same high regard as the Holloway Prisoners banner.
That banner, now in the Museum of London, was a tribute to hunger-striking suffragettes designed by Glasgow School of Art teacher Ann Macbeth and embroidered by her students.
Our works too are the product of collective endeavour, with our group now also members of Women’s Rights Network Scotland.
The banners we will be bringing to Women Create are some of our most ambitious works to date, and we will be displaying the first banner made for our movement with contributions from other WRN Scotland members, Women Won’t Wheesht, and other women from across Scotland.
Nehanda Music
Nehanda’s career was ignited in 2019 when she appeared on the all-female posse cut, The Switch Up, which featured 12 MCs from around the country. The success of that track catapulted her into an industry about which she knew very little, and so she has taken the time over the last 12 months to learn the ropes and find her feet, in the midst of a very male dominated environment.
Paula Boulton
Paula Boulton has many strings to her bow. As a musician, playwright and theatre director she believes in using the arts as a tool in her activism to create a better world. Whether through her documentary political theatre, feminist song workshops, or composing a symphonic orchestral suite inspired by the sounds of home shared by the 30 different nationalities she interviewed. People’s stories are at the heart of Paula’s work as a social documenter over the past 25 years.
She has performed as a violinist internationally, but is equally happy busking and involving people in music making at any level, believing that we need bread and roses and that the arts are essential if “we want to sing and dance and make love, just like any human at our revolution.”
Michelle Kelly
Michelle Kelly is a bestselling author and ghostwriter. Her crime novel 'When I Wasn't Watching' was published in 2014 by HarperCollins and went to number 1 in the UK and Australian charts.She has since been published by Macmillan in the US and is a USA Today bestselling ghostwriter of both fiction and memoir. In 2019 she first publicly spoke about her experiences of domestic violence and sex trafficking within the 'escorting' and porn industries and was 'cancelled,' doxxed, harassed and libelled as a result. Between 2014 and 2020 she taught creative writing and therapeutic writing classes in the local community for women in recovery from addiction and sexual exploitation. She is now disabled due to ME and Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and has taken a break to work very slowly on her memoir. She is proudly working-class and of Roma/Traveller heritage.
Lucy Brown
Lucy Brown is a portrait and documentary photographer and a committed free speech advocate. Her work spans the political spectrum, capturing intimate portraits of figures on both the left and right. She has travelled extensively across the UK and Europe, documenting the experiences of women facing violence and misogyny under reckless open-border policies, as well as the impact of Covid restrictions on live music venues. Driven by a passion for cultural preservation and a lifelong love of music, Lucy’s photography explores the tension between tradition and change. Her work has appeared in publications including Vogue, NME, Clash, Metal Hammer and The Museum of Youth Culture.
Jane Clare Jones
I grew up in a faded seaside town on the south coast of England where I went to the local state school. I then studied Social and Political Science at Cambridge, where I got a first class degree and was informed by a rather pompous man that my “intellectual trajectory” was “unfortunate.” (Nothing’s changed there then). I spent my twenties kicking about wondering what to do with myself, working as a private tutor, teaching English in investment banks in London (that was odd), and pretending I was good at schmoozing around the independent film scene when I blatantly was not. (Still I did get to work with Rockbitch and assistant directed a truly terrible film of a man delivering a cod-Becketian anti-globalisation monologue while standing on a fake iceberg). By 2004 I’d grown up enough to not care whether pompous men thought my intellectual trajectory unfortunate and went back to university, studying continental and feminist philosophy at Goldsmiths (MPhil) and the State University of New York (PhD). Since 2011 I have been involved in feminist activism while writing popular pieces at the intersection of feminism, politics and culture.
