Lebanese young artist boosts Arab women empowerment through art

CAIRO – 8 March 2019: Lebanese artist Christina Atik has made a group of digital pictures to highlight famed sentences used in Arab countries to criticize women.

Atik explained that she produced these pictures to boost Arab women empowerment.


Atik’s pictures illustrate issues related to women such as liberty, beauty and sexuality in male dominated societies.

The 27 years old artist said that the idea of the project came to her after her younger sister Maria was subjected to criticism from their mother.

“She has a big nose and my mum always made fun of her saying ‘when are you going to do an operation for your nose?’, ‘your nose is not nice for a girl, I decided to do a drawing for my sister to show her that her nose is beautiful and she doesn’t have to listen to mum. And this worked, she did not do an operation for her nose” Atik said to Reuters.

Each of Atik’s pictures comprises a sketch, along with a comment in Arabic.

“I hadn’t at all expected people to share them that much, and women have started to send me things they hear from their families and societies around them. Women from Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia... were touched by the illustrations I did, so that was something really nice,” she said to Reuters.

Every year the young Lebanese artist celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8 by partying with friends.