Arabella Dorman (born 1975 in London) [1] is a British war artist and portrait painter. [2] [3] She was chosen as one of the BBC's "100 Women" in 2014. [4]
Dorman was born in 1975 in London. She studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London (since absorbed into Central Saint Martins) and the University of Edinburgh. [2] She is married to Dominic Elliot. [2]
In 2006 Dorman was Britain's first official war artist to go to the front line in Iraq [3] after being invited by Lt Gen Richard Shirreff, who had purchased one of her works. [5] She started her time in Iraq with the Royal Green Jackets in Basra Palace, where she frequently came under enemy fire, then went to the desert near the Iranian border. [6] She spent time with British forces in Afghanistan in 2009-2014. In 2009 she was embedded with 2nd Battalion, The Rifles in Sangin, Helmand, though she was not allowed to accompany soldiers on patrol, [7] and in 2010 travelled within Afghanistan from her base in Kabul. [8]
Her humanitarian work has taken her to Gaza, Palestine & Israel (2017), Lebanon, Syria (2018) and most recently, Ukraine (2023). Dorman's work explores the realities of modern conflict, its immediate impacts and long-term consequences, and the light that can be born out of the darkness of war.
She worked with refugees in Lesbos, Calais and Dunkirk in 2015 and 2016. [9] In December 2015 she created an art installation by suspending a dinghy, which had been used to transport refugees across the Mediterranean, from the roof of St James's Church, Piccadilly. [10] [11] Called Flight, the exhibit was on display until February 2016, and related the flight of refugees to the ancient tradition of hanging boats from church roofs. [12]
Following on from Dorman's critically acclaimed work Flight , Suspended formed part of her ongoing series of works seeking to highlight the humanitarian crisis of forced displacement across the world today. Suspended premiered in 2017 in St. James's Piccadilly, before touring the UK from 2018-2019, and was notably installed in Canterbury Cathedral and Leicester Cathedrals.
Dorman has exhibited at venues including the Imperial War Museum, the Frost and Reed Gallery, and La Galleria Pall Mall. [13] She works as an Ambassador to the charities Beyond Conflict [14] and Afghanaid and is a member of the Guild of St John of Jerusalem Eye Hospital. [9]
In 2024 Dorman exhibited Child of War at the Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral [15] , London. This body of work explores the plight of children in war across the world today.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) is a United Nations agency mandated to aid and protect refugees, forcibly displaced communities, and stateless people, and to assist in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. It is headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, with over 18,879 staff working in 138 countries as of 2020.
Humanitarian aid workers belonging to United Nations organisations, PVOs / NGOs or the Red Cross / Red Crescent are among the list of protected persons under international humanitarian law that grant them immunity from attack by belligerent parties. However, attacks on humanitarian workers have occasionally occurred, and become more frequent since the 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, the Aid Worker Security Database (AWSD) documented 139 humanitarian workers killed in intentional attacks out of the estimated global population of 569,700 workers. In every year since 2013, more than 100 humanitarian workers were killed. This is attributed to a number of factors, including the increasing number of humanitarian workers deployed, the increasingly unstable environments in which they work, and the erosion of the perception of neutrality and independence. In 2012 road travel was seen to be the most dangerous context, with kidnappings of aid workers quadrupling in the last decade, reaching more aid workers victims than any other form of attack.
George Noel Gittoes, is an Australian artist, film producer, director and writer. In 1970, he was a founder of the Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney. After the Yellow House finished, he established himself in Bundeena and since then has produced a large and varied output of drawings, paintings, films, and writings. Gittoes’ work has consistently expressed his social, political and humanitarian concern at the effects of injustice and conflict. Until the mid-1980s, this work was chiefly done in Australia. But in 1986 he travelled to Nicaragua, and since then the focus of Gittoes’ work has been largely international. He has travelled to and worked in many regions of conflict, including the Philippines, Somalia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Bougainville, and South Africa. In recent years his work has especially centred on the Middle East, with repeated visits to Israel and Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan. In 2011, he established a new Yellow House, a multidisciplinary arts centre in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. Among many prizes, Gittoes has twice been awarded the Blake Prize for Religious Art.
A war artist is an artist either commissioned by a government or publication, or self-motivated, to document first-hand experience of war in any form of illustrative or depictive record. War artists explore the visual and sensory dimensions of war, often absent in written histories or other accounts of warfare.
Farnaz Fassihi is an Iranian-American journalist who has worked for The New York Times since 2019. She is the United Nations bureau chief and also writes about Iranian news. Previously she was a senior writer for The Wall Street Journal for 17 years and a conflict reporter based in the Middle East.
War Child International is an independent non-government organization founded in 1993 by film-makers Bill Leeson, David Wilson, and peace activist Willemijn Verloop. The organization works with parents, caregivers, community members, NGOs, governments, corporations, and other partners worldwide to ensure that children have access to protection, education and psychosocial support. War Child's work is rooted in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
St James's Church, Piccadilly, also known as St James's Church, Westminster, and St James-in-the-Fields, is an Anglican church on Piccadilly in the centre of London, England. The church was designed and built by Sir Christopher Wren.
Adam James Harold Holloway is a British Conservative Party politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Gravesham from 2005-2024. A Government Whip from September to October 2022, and previously an Assistant Government Whip from July to September 2022, he currently serves on the Home Affairs Select Committee and European Scrutiny Committee. He was a vocal supporter of pro-Brexit lobby group Leave Means Leave.
Lida Abdul, is an Afghani-born video artist and performance artist. She was born as Lida Abdullah in Kabul in 1979, fled the country as a child during the Soviet Invasion, and went on to live in India and Germany then the United States.
Kathy Kelly is an American peace activist, pacifist and author, one of the founding members of Voices in the Wilderness, and, until the campaign closed in 2020, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. As part of peace team work in several countries, she has traveled to Iraq twenty-six times, notably remaining in combat zones during the early days of both US–Iraq wars.
Sama Raena Alshaibi also known as Sama Alshaibi is a conceptual artist, who deals with spaces of conflict as her primary subject. War, exile, power and the quest for survival are themes seen in her works. She often uses her own body in her artwork as a representation of the country or an issue she is dealing with.
Farah Nosh is an Iraqi Canadian photojournalist. Her work about Iraq and its conflicts has been exhibited in galleries in the U.S. and UK. She has appeared on the CNN Inside The Middle East segment "Someone You Should Know", which explores different persons and their effects on the region.
Lynsey Addario is an American photojournalist. Her work often focuses on conflicts and human rights issues, especially the role of women in traditional societies. In 2022, she received a Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women's Media Foundation (IWMF).
British official war artists were a select group of artists who were employed on contract, or commissioned to produce specific works during the First World War, the Second World War and select military actions in the post-war period. Official war artists have been appointed by governments for information or propaganda purposes and to record events on the battlefield; but there are many other types of war artist.
Katherine Emily Holt is a British photojournalist, who works primarily across Africa and the Middle East to gather humanitarian and development stories for NGOs and private companies, as well as the UK and global media. She is also the director of communications agency, Arete.
Clarissa Ward is a British-American television journalist who is the chief international correspondent for CNN. Previously, she was with CBS News, based in London. Before her CBS News position, Ward was a Moscow-based news correspondent for ABC News programs.
Moira Forsyth was an English stained-glass artist. Her father was Gordon Forsyth a Scottish ceramics designer, stained-glass artist, and teacher. They both made works for the St. Joseph's Church in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire. She made her name for her stained-glass works, such as those found at Guildford Cathedral, Norwich Cathedral and Eton College Chapel.
Erin Grace Trieb is an American photojournalist. Trieb focuses on international social issues and is currently based in Istanbul, Turkey.
Alixandra Fazzina is a British photojournalist. Her first book is A Million Shillings – Escape from Somalia. In 2008 she was the recipient of the Vic Odden Award from the Royal Photographic Society. In 2010 she won the UNHCR's Nansen Refugee Award for her work documenting the effect of war on uprooted people. In 2015 she was shortlisted for the Prix Pictet.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Memorial in London commemorates British citizens, including both military personnel and civilians, who participated in the Gulf War, the Afghanistan War and the Iraq War. In these three conflicts, which took place between 1990 and 2015, 682 British service personnel died. A work by the sculptor Paul Day, the memorial is situated in Victoria Embankment Gardens, between the River Thames and the headquarters of the Ministry of Defence, in the vicinity of monuments commemorating the Second World War and the Korean War.