Drawn From Pain, Written From Truth
Visitors From Dreams was invited to capture the opening night of Amera Ali and Suad Smo’s exhibition Drawn From Pain, Written From Truth at the New England Regional Art Museum through both photography and film.
This was a deeply personal event for everyone involved, particularly the artists, Amera and Suad. I found it quite confronting, with imagery that reminded me a lot of the things I was drawing as a teenager. The difference was that I was doing it to be edgy—it was empty, with no real meaning beyond perhaps trying to get a reaction out of people. Suad’s illustrations, by comparison, came from a place of genuine pain. They were an outlet, a form of self-expression, and carried far more meaning than anything I have ever really created, to be frank.
It was an incredibly powerful reminder of just how detached we can sometimes be in Australia from the realities of the wider world, and that violence as entertainment—something I still engage with frequently—is, in many ways, deeply complicated.
Drawn From Pain, Written from Truth brings together the powerful testimonies of Amera Ali and Suad Smo in an exhibition that speaks to survival, memory and resilience. Captured by ISIS as young girls during the Yezidi genocide, both artists draw on lived experience to share deeply personal accounts of displacement, violence and endurance. Through text, Amera Ali reflects on trauma, survival and the difficult process of rebuilding a life after unimaginable loss, while Suad Smo’s artworks give visual form to grief, cultural memory and resilience. Together, their practices become acts of witness and resistance, ensuring stories too often silenced are seen and heard.
Client Name
Armidale Sanctuary Humanitarian Settlement
NERAM
Date
June 2026
Category
Photography/Video
