The Daring Kurdish Artist Who Smuggled Her Work Out In Turkish Prison’s Dirty Laundry

Zehra Doğan had little access to visual art materials during her imprisonment in Turkey, where she was jailed for painting a Kurdish town that was destroyed by Erdogan’s government in 2015. “With no paper, Doğan used newspaper, cardboard and clothes as canvases. For paint, she found that crushed herbs made green, kale was a substitute for purple, and pomegranate or menstrual blood could be used for red. Blue ballpoint pen, cigarette ash, coffee grounds, pepper and turmeric make up much of the rest of her prison palette.” – The Guardian (UK)