From September 15 to October 15, 2025, the street exhibition «She is Crimea, She is World» took place in Wrocław, Poland, featuring Crimean Tatar women – eleven exceptional figures, both historical and contemporary. Thanks to the cooperation of Wikimedia Ukraine, Wikimedia Poland, the Krymski Dom Foundation, and fellow women Wikipedians, Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia are now enriched with new images, and exceptional Crimean Tatar female activists can enjoy the spotlight. And I invite you to join the effort!
The Polish Initiative for Crimean Tatar Awareness
The exhibition was prepared by the Polish foundation «Krymski Dom», which promotes Crimean Tatar topics in Poland. Prior to this, the project was presented in Przemyśl in August during the Polish-Ukrainian literary festival, and after Wrocław, it moved to Warsaw.
As a note to the reader: Crimean Tatars are an Eastern European Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea, where they were the most populous demographic until the 20th century. Recognized as an indigenous people by Ukraine and the European Union, they have been members of the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Significant Crimean Tatar diaspora populations exist in Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria.
Each exhibition stand was dedicated to one of the heroines, including singer Jamala, feminist leader Şefiqa Gaspıralı, and civil rights activist Ayşe Seitmuratova. The stand contained biographical information and a portrait – a collage specially created for this project by artist Natella Shavadze. It was clear that the images from these stands could serve as excellent illustrations for Wikipedia articles, and, additionally, by being in Wikimedia Commons, they would become accessible to a broad audience worldwide.
I contacted the Krymski Dom Foundation and they agreed to release the collage images under a free license. The Vice-President of the Board of the Krymski Dom Foundation, Ms. Barbara Kaczmarczyk, supported this initiative and mentioned that proposal to publish the images of the heroines in Wikimedia projects perfectly aligned with their goals, as it allows the exhibition’s message to reach a wide international audience. The «She is Crimea, She is World» exhibition was designed to introduce the history of Crimean Tatars to the Polish public, highlight the situation in occupied Crimea, and demonstrate the crucial role of women in the community. The organizers used the artistic form of collage to discuss complex issues in a modern way and challenge stereotypes about women in Muslim communities.
Collaboration in Action
All formal procedures for the release were completed quite quickly. Wikimedia Poland verified and approved the application for permission to use the images of portrait collages under the free Creative Commons license on the same day. Then I uploaded 47 files to Wikimedia Commons – 11 portrait collages and 36 photographs of the Wrocław exhibition (as derivative works that do not require additional permission), created appropriate categories, added the images to Wikidata and articles on Wikipedia. And for six of these eleven women, these are currently the only images of them on Commons. For example, in the Ukrainian article about the writer Alie Kendzhalieva, the collage from the exhibition is now her main image in the infobox.
From Wrocław to Wikipedia
The uploaded images are now illustrating 24 articles on Wikipedia in Polish, Ukrainian, English, Russian, and Crimean Tatar. Articles on many of these heroines are available in numerous languages – including German, French, Italian, Bulgarian, and Japanese – and are also ready to be illustrated.
Simultaneously, for some of the exhibition’s heroines currently there are no articles in any language. They are important figures and well-known activists such as one of the first Crimean Tatar leaders Inci-Bek-hatun, singer Elvira Sarykhalil, journalist Lutfiye Zudieva, and entrepreneur and cultural figure Susanna Izzetdinova. Their Wikidata items and Wikimedia Commons categories are now created, and available sources of information are gathered, so the next step would be including them in the lists of proposed topics for the «(Un)known Women on Wikipedia» campaign on Ukrainian Wikipedia, which is planned for December–January 2025.
Please join the effort to bring knowledge about them into your language Wikipedia or add information about them into their Wikidata items or Wikimedia Commons description!
Oksana Makarenko, Wikimedia Ukraine
List of heroines from the exhibition with links to their Wikidata IDs:
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