Inji Efflatoun was a feminist, Marxist, and anticolonialist artist and activist, born into a Turkish–Circassian aristocratic family. Prisoner, also known as Ahlam al-sitt Bahanna (1963), was painted during Efflatoun’s four-year imprisonment. Efflatoun, a woman from high society, strove to better understand the reality of the Egyptian people and described prison as an opportunity to connect with underprivileged women. Through her many portraits of her fellow inmates, Efflatoun attempted to denounce the ravages of poverty on women. Ahlam al-sitt Bahanna, or “The Dreams of Lady Bahanna”, shows a prisoner, designated by her first name, embroidering a patterned garment meant for a child she hopes to conceive. This vision of a prisoner embroidering is testimony to a specific event: women prisoners won their right to perform manual labour following a hunger strike in which Efflatoun participated.
Works by Inji Efflatoun were presented at Biennale Arte in the Egyptian Pavilion in 1952 and 1968 and in the Central Pavilion in 2015.
—Nadine Atallah
