Another hundred people just got off of the train…

What I love most about sitting on the tube in London is the vast amount of different people I can see. People of different shapes, sizes, colours, religions… A favourite past time of mine involves listening to people talk in a language I cannot understand and imagining what and who they are talking about! Manchester is an extremely diverse city, but it doesn’t quite prepare you for the melting pot that is London.

And this stretches far beyond the morning commute, it touches every area of the city’s creative output – and the BUTA Festival, which I have encountered over the last few months, certainly highlights this fact. In it’s second year, this festival celebrates Azerbaijani art and culture across London. Having no experience of this I was excited to attend three events: Faces of Freedom (an art exhibition), Telescope (a play), and The Pursuit of Now (a live music and dance performance).

Faces of Freedom is a collection of photographs by Alexandra Kremer-Khomassouridze. Each piece shows a triptych – a woman unveiled, the same woman in a head scarf and then the woman wearing a hijab. All of the women featured are of different ages, different backgrounds, different religions and different professions. The first thing that struck me about the exhibition was that it appeared completely black and white, and yet the emotions and stories of these women were anything but. The projector set up in the corner recounted interviews where the women shared their experiences.

“No one left my studio the same. Our conversations had a lasting effect on each of the ladies, as well as myself. The complexity of the process was amazing. Some of my models, experiencing this for the first time, cried and preferred not to wear a hijab at all; some responded exactly the opposite, telling me that they would consider wearing it one day, others who entered the studio wearing a hijab refused to take it off.”