Bring Back Our Girls

Week 15, 2018 → 2026

Week 15 of the 2018 Archive titled Bring Back Our Girls

I created Bring Back Our Girls in April 2018 in response to the abduction of schoolgirls in Nigeria.

But the piece was never only about the event itself.

It was also about visibility.

About refusing disappearance.

About showing faces, saying names, and remembering that people are more than the violence inflicted on them.

The work was created during a period when conflicts across the world were increasingly shaped by strongmen, militarization, extremism, and political power struggles, while ordinary people, especially women and children, absorbed the consequences.

In many of those conflicts, bodies became leverage.

Lives became collateral.

And years later, the pattern continues.

Now: 2026

In 2026, reports and images emerged showing schools and hospitals damaged during the U.S., Israeli bombing campaign involving Iran.

Children in classrooms.

Schools turned into targets.

Different place. Familiar pattern.

The point is not that history repeats in identical ways.

It doesn’t.

The point is that systems of power often reproduce the same human consequences across time, geography, and politics.

The vulnerable pay first.

And often most deeply.

Closer Than We Think

Power does not only exist in distant wars or foreign governments.

It can also appear through domestic policy.

Through decisions about women’s bodies.

Through laws that fail to protect children.

Through systems people inherit, enforce, endure, or normalize without fully questioning.

And the cycle continues.

The Question

How many more lives have to carry the cost of power before we do better?