How a Hong Kong refugee is empowering women with art collective
Clarisse Akonyi, a former nurse from Congo, has created a group that organises arts and crafts workshops for female refugees
With a measuring tape draped around her neck, Clarisse Akonyi looks every bit the fashion designer she is as she spreads a piece of colourful fabric onto a table before carefully pinning it to a paper pattern.
A refugee from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Akonyi arrived in Hong Kong in 2011, leaving her life as a nurse behind her. But like many of the city’s 14,000-plus asylum seekers and refugees, who get little support and face a lot of discrimination, Akonyi found life on the fringes tough.
So she decided to do something about it.
In 2017, Akonyi – with support from Tegan Smyth, founder of Table of Two Cities, a grass-roots project that unites refugees through food – set up Art Women, a group of female asylum seekers who share a passion for arts and crafts. But Akonyi says it is more than a creative collective – it is also a counselling and therapy platform for female refugees.
“Art Women is about creating a safe environment to help women recover from trauma, to help them heal and rebuild self-esteem – to empower them,” says 30-something Akonyi.
Last year, after noticing that Hong Kong lacked quality African garments, Akonyi started importing the unisex, traditional Congolese fabric called liputa, which comes in bright and bold patterns.
