War Games - Afghan Women at the gallows, 2007

2007

War Games – Afghan Woman, 2007 Offset print on satin, 40x20 inches

“Her pupils reflect not play, but punishment. A noose, a veil, a sentence—carved into the soft illusion of innocence.”

In this haunting image, part of Lydia Venieri’s ongoing War Games series, a porcelain-eyed doll stares wide-eyed, her tiny hands raised in a gesture of alarm or enforced silence. Reflected in the black mirrors of her eyes is the figure of a veiled woman with a hangman’s noose around her neck—a brutal, cinematic collision of innocence and state-sanctioned femicide.

This work speaks directly to the systemic erasure of women’s rights in regimes like the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, where the act of being a woman can carry a death sentence. The noose, depicted without spectacle but with chilling finality, references real-life executions of women accused of violating patriarchal codes—seeking education, rejecting forced marriage, speaking freely. In many such regions, marriage itself is a site of captivity, not sanctuary, and violence is woven into the fabric of daily life.