Interview
Art
Culture
Freedom of Belief
Trauma
9 min read

The women with tears of gold

Artist Hannah Thomas’ visceral and moving portraits offer a glimpse into suffering, and healing, souls.

Jane Cacouris is a writer and consultant working in international development on environment, poverty and livelihood issues.

A triptych of three portraits depicting of white shawled women agains a gold background
Hannah Thomas

“We may understand the statistics of violence against women, and the catastrophic effects such violence has on the fabric of society, but we don’t comprehend it until it is associated with a face, a voice, a story.”

Christopher Bailey, World Health Organization  

In March of this year on International Women’s Day, I was invited to attend the art exhibition and book launch of Tears of Gold by artist, Hannah Rose Thomas. Visceral and moving, the exhibition included both Hannah’s paintings and the self portraits of women survivors of ethnic and religious persecution, forced displacement and sexual violence; Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity in Iraq, Rohingya women who fled violence in Myanmar and Nigerian women who are survivors of Boko Haram and Fulani violence.  

As I walked around the exhibition looking at the faces of thirty-three girls and women ranging in age from twelve to fifty years old, I saw faces that radiated dignity and resilience but also pain and grief that is beyond words. Most are looking away, but a few look straight ahead, their eyes locking with the eyes of the onlooker.  

One was of Charity. As a woman myself, I felt an unexplained connection with this woman looking straight at me from the painting. She asked without words that I try to understand something of her suffering. Charity was held captive by Boko Haram in Northern Nigeria for three years and forced to “marry” one of her captors and convert from Christianity to Islam. She was raped and gave birth in captivity to a baby girl named Rahila. When Charity was eventually rescued from her ordeal and reunited with her husband in a camp for internally displaced people, her husband beat her and rejected her baby. Now on a daily basis, she faces abuse and isolation in the camp. Although she is no longer harmed by her perpetrators, she is still paying for their crimes.  

Another, Basse. The raw pain in her eyes strikes me. At the time Hannah painted her in 2017, it was three years since Basse’s daughter (age six) had been taken by Daesh (ISIS) after their Yazedi community was attacked and displaced in Sinjar in Iraq. She had since found her daughter’s photo on a “marketplace” website of girls for sale. As a mother myself I can only just begin to comprehend her anguish as one mother to another we gaze at each other through the painting.  

As works of art, the portraits are extraordinarily skillful and beautiful, but they are so much more than that. They offer a glimpse into the soul of women who have experienced the most unspeakable suffering. In the words of Prince Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, they are Hannah’s “witness statement” for and on behalf of thirty-three brave women survivors, as well as shining a spotlight on the issue of gender-based violence that affects millions of women (a staggering one in three according to UN Women) across the world today.  

From refugee camps to Whitehall  

When I caught up with Hannah recently, she spoke about the privilege of meeting these women during the trauma-healing art workshops she organised with support of local partners and the sponsorship of charities (including BRAC, Open Doors, World Vision and Bellwether International).  

Starting out as an Arabic student in Jordan, she had her first opportunity to work with Syrian refugees for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in 2014. She began to paint the portraits of some of the refugees to show the real people behind the statistics of the global refugee crisis. This first gave her a glimpse of the healing potential of the arts and how it can be used as a tool for advocacy. Since Jordan, she’s been able to organise art projects with Yazidi women who escaped ISIS captivity in Iraqi Kurdistan in 2017; Rohingya refugees in Bangladeshi camps and Christian women survivors of sexual violence at the hands of Boko Haram and Fulani militants in Northern Nigeria, both in 2018, and most recently with women from the asylum-seeking community in Glasgow and Ukrainian refugees in Romania. 

Warm and immensely articulate, Hannah seems impossibly young, grounded and humble to have been on such a remarkable life journey already, from working with the women in the camps to exhibiting her paintings in numerous places of influence including the European Parliament, the British Houses of Parliament and Buckingham Palace, even meeting HRH King Charles and showing him her portraits of the Yazedi women.  

She describes King Charles, who went on to write the foreword for her book, as “genuinely interested in the stories of the women and really touched by them.” 

Easing the burden 

Creativity and an interest in the power of the story has always fascinated Hannah since she was a child. And as she writes in the introduction to Tears of Gold, all her work has a common thread of intention, “the restoration of these women’s voices”. She longs to give them a unique platform to tell their stories and refers to Holocaust survivor Primo Levi who describes the “unlistened-to story” as the enduring burden of the survivor.  

This desire to give a voice to the voiceless has dove-tailed in a surprising and powerful way with her love of creativity. She says,  

“Ever since I was young I have…had this desire to be a voice for the voiceless somehow but never imagined this could be through art. For many years there has been this tension between these two aspects of myself – this longing to express something of the beauty of God through my paintings and yet another aspect compelled to work in the sphere of social justice and human rights. God has woven together these two separate strands in the most beautiful and unexpected way.” 

Drawing on the writings of the French Philosopher Simone Weil, Hannah asks in her book:

“can the creative arts create a space to pay attention to the unspeakable suffering of another? Can this help restore her?” 

She tells me about the privilege of seeing the transformative impact on some of the women in her workshops as she taught them to put brush to paper to paint their self-portraits as a way of telling their stories. Many of the women painted themselves with tears. What is striking is that the stories behind the art reveal survivors not victims. One young Nigerian women Aisha, who had suffered rape at the hands of Fulani militants, painted gold tears she said symbolised God bestowing on her a crown of beauty instead of ashes; the oil of joy instead of mourning. Her story is about being precious in God’s eyes and his restorative healing in the face of unimaginable human-induced suffering.  

One girl who took part in the Nigerian art project, Florence, had been raped by Fulani militants when she was ten years old. On her last day at Hannah’s art project she said, “Here I have found peace of mind.” God using his healing hand through art. 

Connecting through vulnerability  

“I had been on my own journey through post-traumatic stress disorder and depression. Painting has been an important part of my recovery journey and how I learned to find my voice again. This was one of the key motivations behind these art projects as I wanted to be able to bring this gift to others.” 

The stigma that survivors of sexual violence face in their own communities when they return home is particularly painful. During the art project in Northern Nigeria, Hannah publicly shared about her own struggles, following a traumatic experience as a young woman, with survivors of rape by Boko Haram and Fulani militants. The women later reflected together that this vulnerability connected them as women and helped them realise that they were not to blame and need not be ashamed. It began to break the stigma and silence and to create a safe space of mutual trust so they could begin to share their experiences.  

Hannah writes, “Sharing our stories enables us to connect, and reminds us that we have more in common than divides us”.  

Most precious and in the image of God  

Coming face to face with the portraits painted by Hannah, as the daughter of a Portuguese Catholic father, I recognised the likeness of the style, colour and reverence to the icon painting of Jesus that my parents have on their wall at home.  

Drawing on Mother Theresa who talked about “seeking the face of God in everything, everyone, everywhere, all the time . . . especially in the distressing disguise of the poor,” Hannah’s portraits seek to revere each woman, to paint them with the love and devotion that God might. They remind us that they are all of exquisite value in God’s eyes.  

Hannah’s expression lifts as she explains the methods of iconography that she studied and practiced in order to paint the women’s portraits and the palette she used. Gold leaf as a symbol of their sacredness to God regardless of what they have suffered, and lapis lazuli, the most expensive and illustrious blue pigment sourced from the mountains of Afghanistan and used by artists such as Michelangelo in the Renaissance period, unparalleled for its depth and richness and purity.  

Each painting takes a long time to complete, around nine days, due to a layering process required to build up the colour in the natural pigments that are used, Hannah says:

“I'm interested in the quality of attention. And the contemplative prayerful aspect of the paintings. For me they're a form of prayer. Praying for each of the women I've met.”

She explains that the process of Byzantine painting is like a prayer. Starting with the under painting with all the dark colours, the background tone, and then slowly progressing on a journey, adding in highlights, from darkness to light. It’s “symbolic of the journey of the soul” she says.  

And how are they received in the political corridors of power? Hannah pauses.  

“The fact that it takes so much time. It’s different from a photograph. It invites people to contemplate in a way that's quite unique. In a place with such high pressure where there isn't much time to pause. It’s about creating space for contemplation. Where mentalities can shift. When you slow down and attend to the story.”  

Impossible to measure the impact of such a shift, but when Hannah tells me about the number of politicians moved to tears by both the paintings and the women’s stories, it is clear the impact is there, measurable or not.

The art of attention 

Tears of Gold opens with Hannah’s reflection on the art of attention. The word “attention” comes from the Latin ad tendere, meaning to reach towards. She writes:

“Only by reaching out in love and understanding can we overcome the agendas of violence and polarisation that seek to divide us.” 

According to Rabbi Jonathan Sachs, this “reaching out” requires a commitment “to see in the human other a trace of the divine Other... to see the divine presence in the face of the stranger.” 

When we reach out and allow ourselves to connect with the suffering of another whose pain is unimaginable – in Hannah’s words, to reach across the abyss of difference between us - we take a step towards understanding that suffering. Art can be a way of bridging that abyss, of opening a passage between us and the other. By taking a step towards the other and understanding just a fraction of their pain, we can be stirred.  

Does the arts have the ability to stir us beyond the self-centred voyeurism that an overload of media imagery may have reduced human suffering to? By the way Hannah’s portraits have been received in the corridors of power in the Global North, we can only hope that the answer is yes.  

Perhaps the arts are the answer to stirring humanity’s compassion to move beyond complacency.  

And to demand a different way.  

 

Tears of Gold by Hannah Rose Thomas can be purchased from Plough. All publisher profits from this book will be donated to relevant charities. 

 

Review
Culture
Film & TV
Friendship
5 min read

I’m going to cling on to The Ballad of Wallis Island

This comedy about fans and idols touches the heart too

Steve is news director of Article 18, a human rights organisation documenting Christian persecution in Iran.

A couple site on a sofa, one holds a guitar
Cary Mulligan and Tom Basden.

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine told me I needed to see The Ballad of Wallis Island.  

He said I’d like it. In fact, my friend went so far as to say he thought it would be one of my favourite ever films.  

And now, having gone to see the new comedy-drama, I can confirm that he was right.  

But just what was it about this film - quite short by modern standards at 1 hour 40 - that marked it out as one I would so obviously enjoy?  

I was considering this as I sat through it, and as my guffaws eventually gave way to tears, I had my answer. 

For when it comes to films - or anything in life, really - it’s those with deeper meaning that most enthrall me. 

And James Griffiths’ new film certainly has this in spades - it’s a “ballad”, after all - as well as a good dose of humour, epitomised by the inimitable Tim Key, whom some of you may know from the 2022 sitcom Witchfinder. 

As someone who grew up on the painfully awkward comedy of Ricky Gervais’ The Office, Key’s character, Charles, the bumbling super-fan of a folk duo, is a perfect blend of the endearing and the ridiculous. 

From the moment “the great Herb McGwyer” (played by Tom Basden) arrives on Wallis Island to be met by a host who swiftly sends him head over heels into the sea, the stage is set for the relationship that will dominate the narrative. 

Devotee and artist, wealthy loner and lonely superstar provide the perfect juxtaposition, whose success is no doubt aided by the fact that both lead actors were also co-writers. 

One suspects the film’s success may also have something to do with the time it spent in development, having first been produced nearly two decades ago as a BAFTA-nominated comedy short, titled The One and Only Herb McGwyer Plays Wallis Island

But having now watched both 2025 film and 2007 short, which is available to watch online, the feature-length version is, to my mind, by far the better of the two. 

And while some of the jokes from the original remain, such as the manner of Herb’s comical arrival and eventual departure - though I won’t spoil the latter for you - there are some notable improvements. 

Chief among them, in my eyes, are the three female characters incorporated into the film: Carey Mulligan, who plays the second half of the McGwyer-Mortimer duo; Charles’ unseen former partner, Marie; and his new love interest, in the form of Wallis Island’s solitary shop-owner, Amanda (Sian Clifford). 

It’s funny to think that my friend pitched the film to me as a “Rom-com”, given that in the original concept there was not even a single female character, let alone any romance. Yet from this viewer’s perspective at least, it is the addition of the three women (including the unseen Marie) that make the film. 

Indeed, this major tweak to the plotline was the very element that ultimately brought tears to my eyes, as I considered the relational loss and loneliness that provide the common ground between the otherwise worlds-apart super-fan and idol. 

I saw the same look in this woman’s eyes as I had seen in Charles’s as he watched his hero play the song that was his former partner’s favourite. 

I was also forced to reflect upon the certain similarity I seem to share with the blundering Charles, having once lived two doors down from the real Carey Mulligan and, during our sole face-to-face encounter, chose the moment to express my great admiration for the music of her husband, Marcus Mumford, before awkwardly and very swiftly beating my retreat. 

I am embarrassed to admit that I even later posted a copy of one of my books into the Mumford letterbox - possibly that very same day - in the hope that it might engender the start of a beautiful friendship.  

Alas, I never heard from them again. 

A similar motivation is clearly the driving force behind Charles’ invitation of his two idols to his home, which is filled with their memorabilia, as the audience is encouraged to consider how they may feel if given the opportunity to host their own heroes. 

“Never meet your heroes,” Charles quips in the original short, but in the film the relationships are allowed to reach greater depths and, in spite of some initial suggestions that Charles’ affections may be bordering on stalker-like, it soon becomes clear that there is nothing sinister about this loveable simpleton. 

The rave reviews the film has received, years after the idea was first hatched, are also surely an encouragement to any of us who may have long held a dream but never seen it come to pass. 

The message of The Ballad of Wallis Island, I believe, is that we should hold onto such dreams and cling tightly to the things that matter most. 

Before sitting down to write this article, I was walking through a local park when I passed a young woman who was sitting on the grass, crying, and I approached her to ask if she was all right.  

It transpired that the woman’s partner had died a year before and that she liked to come back to the tree under which she was sitting to remember him, as it was a special place for them. 

I saw the same look in this woman’s eyes as I had seen in Charles’s as he watched his hero play the song that was his former partner’s favourite. 

"Cling to the things that matter most,” the woman told me, as we parted ways. And that’s certainly the message that both film and chance encounter have impressed upon me.

Support Seen & Unseen

Since Spring 2023, our readers have enjoyed over 1,500 articles. All for free. 
This is made possible through the generosity of our amazing community of supporters.

If you enjoy Seen & Unseen, would you consider making a gift towards our work?
 
Do so by joining Behind The Seen. Alongside other benefits, you’ll receive an extra fortnightly email from me sharing my reading and reflections on the ideas that are shaping our times.

Graham Tomlin
Editor-in-Chief