Knowledge Warriers is a tryptic about women and the quest for knowledge. In the three consecutive panels, Pakistani school girls exit their school gate while Malala Yousafzai confronts the forces of tradition that would hold them back. As a beautiful woman in hijab watches, the courageous Malala Yousafzai stands courageously delivering a message to a microphone powered by the mythical goddess, Durga (Hindu mountain-goddess, war-goddess). Otherwise called Shakti (power), Durga generates all forms of knowledge of the world. Representing the dark episode of her shooting, a black bird scrapes past Malala, mingling with the flock in abstract black strokes across those vast foothills of Balochistan, Pakistan. The hills are a metaphor for the deeply embedded cultural forces she is engaged with in her home country on behalf of women.
In the lower right panel, yellow abstract shapes represent the brilliant Harvard prizewinning scientist, Hayat Sindi. She invented a new way to diagnose liver disease, and perhaps eventually AIDS—potentially replacing costly lab tests in remote locations. A social innovator, Sindi co-founded Diagnostics for All and heads the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity, which will help Middle Eastern scientists write business plans and find investors for their ideas. I lunched with Hayat Sindi twice at PopTech 2011, and found her to be gracious and delightful—fairly glowing with her passion to apply her brilliance in science to improve peoples' lives.
In the lower right panel, yellow abstract shapes represent the brilliant Harvard prizewinning scientist, Hayat Sindi. She invented a new way to diagnose liver disease, and perhaps eventually AIDS—potentially replacing costly lab tests in remote locations. A social innovator, Sindi co-founded Diagnostics for All and heads the Institute for Imagination and Ingenuity, which will help Middle Eastern scientists write business plans and find investors for their ideas. I lunched with Hayat Sindi twice at PopTech 2011, and found her to be gracious and delightful—fairly glowing with her passion to apply her brilliance in science to improve peoples' lives.