Hannah Rose Thomas: Art as Advocacy
On this episode of Meeting Our Moment, Jeremy Begbie talks to artist Hannah Rose Thomas about sharing stories through portraiture and how art can be used as a form of advocacy.
Click below (or here) to hear Begbie and Thomas’ full, unedited conversation, including a discussion of compassion vs pity, whether utility spoils the beauty of art, and the discipline of contemplation through painting.
Hannah Rose Thomas
Hannah Rose Thomas is an English artist, with a degree in Arabic and History from Durham University, and an MA from the Prince's School of Traditional Art in London.
While living in Jordan as a student of Arabic, she found herself organizing art projects with Syrian refugees. This led her to seek ways of combining her artistic skills with her humanitarian passion. She began painting portraits of refugees, to draw attention to the people behind the global crisis. Since then, the portraits have been shown at the Houses of Parliament, the European Parliament, the Scottish Parliament, Lambeth Palace. Three of her paintings of Yazidi women were chosen by The Prince of Wales for an exhibition in Buckingham Palace. She was selected as one of the Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2019 and the following year was a nominee for the World Humanitarian Forum Youth Changemaker Award.
She writes, “Through my portrait paintings of refugees, I seek to convey that each of us is created in the image of God and equally valuable in His eyes, regardless of race, religion, economic circumstance or social status.”
Extras
Here are some additional moments from Jeremy’s conversation with Hannah.
Learn More
You can learn more about Hannah Rose Thomas and view many of her refugee portrait paintings on her website. Thomas’ participation in advocacy projects in Northern Nigeria, Iraq, Bangladesh, and Jordan is well documented on her website, where you can also learn more about the women and children she encountered as well as the NGOs that supported these efforts: Open Doors UK & Ireland, BRAC, UNHCR, and Relief International.
“Tears of Gold” – Thomas’ portraits of Yezidi, Rohingya, and Nigerian Women – is featured in the United Nations’ 75th Anniversary exhibition, The Future is Unwritten: “a global initiative to engage the international arts community in the most critical health and sustainability challenges of our time.”
As an extension of these advocacy projects, Thomas’ Ph.D. work evaluates the human and social impact of art on migratory and marginalized communities. She is studying at the University Glasgow, where she is associated with the UNESCO Art Lab for Human Rights and Dialogue and MiDEQ.
In the extended conversation, Hannah mentions exploring the writings of the Russian painter and art theorist Wassily Kandinsky and the French philosopher Simone Weil. Jeremy also shares a memorable reflection from a cellist in the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, an orchestra formed in response to the urgent need for an alternative way to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.