Symposium lectures: Sketching in the Sahara, by Isabel Fiadeiro

This is a brief summary of Isabel Fiadeiro's lecture, which is scheduled for Thursday, July 29, at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.


Between 2004, when I moved to Mauritania, and 2008, I spent 4 to 5 weeks each year in a remote village living with locals as a member of the family, sketching and sharing their daily life. From the fishing villages of the National Park of the Banc d'Arguin in the Atlantic West Coast to the Saharawi Refugee Camps in Tindouf, Algeria, I used my sketchbook as a tool to communicate and learn about a people and countries I was unfamiliar with. In this talk, I'll share my experiences in the different places on how to approach strangers and break the ice and how blogging has allowed me to share my drawings with a wider audience. For the Saharawi women in the refugee camps, the sketchbook also became a way of voicing their cause.