CIVICUS discusses public artwork, gender-based violence and censorship in Iraqi Kurdistan with Tara Abdullah, a multidisciplinary visible artist from Sulaymaniyah who’s at the moment primarily based in Oslo, Norway as a part of the Safemuse – Secure Havens for Artists residency.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, the place conservative spiritual and social norms forestall open dialogue of gender-based violence, femicide stays a persistent, under-reported disaster. Artists who take these points into public area, as a substitute of confining them to galleries or non-public establishments, threat backlash from spiritual authorities, authorized motion and the withdrawal of state permits and funding.
How did you change into an artivist?
I’m from Sulaymaniyah within the Kurdistan Area of Iraq, and I’ve been utilizing artwork to specific myself since I used to be a toddler. I fought laborious to get into artwork college. After ninth grade, I joined the Institute of Artwork and studied there for 5 years, then studied for 4 extra years on the Faculty of Advantageous Arts on the College of Sulaymaniyah and graduated in 2020. All in all, I spent virtually a decade learning artwork and studying new supplies and strategies I may deliver into my work.
Since I graduated in 2020, I’ve used artwork in many alternative kinds, and over the previous six years I’ve tried to deliver artwork and activism collectively, primarily round environmental conservation and girls’s rights.
Doing artwork as a lady right here isn’t straightforward. Dogmas round tradition, faith and custom imply most types of artwork are thought-about haram, or forbidden. Even contained in the artwork neighborhood, I’ve discovered a form of disgust in the direction of sure types of artwork, with individuals saying some issues are too provocative or politically flawed. However studying month-to-month information on femicide and violence towards ladies has pushed me additional to attempt to use components of the tradition and society I grew up in to attempt to break the pink strains set for girls.
What was the Female Challenge?
It was a undertaking I began in 2020, wherein I collected garments from ladies who had confronted violence. I went door to door throughout 1000’s of properties within the metropolis and surrounding cities to interview the ladies and acquire a bit of clothes together with their story. I sewed the items collectively and hung them alongside a five-kilometre stretch of the town’s most important road, main from the principle courtroom to the general public park.
This was my concept of a peaceable protest. Ladies right here can’t converse overtly concerning the violence they face. In the event that they did, they’d face quick backlash. Their garments themselves carry disgrace. When ladies dangle their washing out, they cowl their underwear so it isn’t seen by anybody. I wished to indicate that not even ladies’s garments have the liberty to be touched by the solar, not to mention the ladies themselves.
I put up a public set up somewhat than a gallery, as a result of I wished the general public uncovered to it, not simply the small artwork neighborhood that already agrees with these concepts. By the tip of the primary day, individuals began tearing the piece down and burning components of it, and it triggered an enormous backlash on-line and offline.
What undertaking did you’re employed on then?
After the Female Challenge, I had 1000’s of tales from the ladies I’d interviewed. So in late 2022 I began my Voice Challenge. I turned the tales right into a two-minute speech carrying the load of all of it: honour killing, suicide, violence. Ladies listed here are anticipated to maintain a low voice and by no means give their opinion. Selections are made for them by males. So I created a voice for them.
I performed the message by way of 66 synchronised audio system throughout 4 cities and three surrounding cities in Sulaymaniyah province, all on the identical time. I used megaphones intentionally. They’re symbolically loaded as a result of they’re utilized in mosques by mullahs for the decision to prayer. In most international locations, anybody can converse, however right here it’s all the time a person’s voice, whether or not it’s calling individuals to prayer or promoting groceries. I wished to indicate ladies additionally had a voice.
This brought on an excellent greater backlash than the primary undertaking. Folks began shutting down the audio system, and the mullahs pushed to deliver me to courtroom, accusing me of an immoral act towards our tradition, faith and custom. They accused me of selling homosexuality, which genuinely stunned me, as a result of the piece was straightforwardly about violence towards ladies. When the decide referred to as me in for an announcement, he requested whether or not I used to be selling ‘queer ideology’. I replied that my work promotes particular person freedom. The case was ultimately dismissed, however I needed to get in another country and keep away for just a few weeks till issues settled down.
I believe the backlash comes from the visibility. The artwork neighborhood is tiny, and artwork sometimes stays inside galleries the place only a few individuals see it. However once you deliver it out into the general public area, it exposes emotions the general public didn’t know had been there.
How do you handle the dangers that this work brings?
For the Female Challenge, constructing belief with the ladies was very troublesome. I needed to reassure them I wasn’t taking pictures or recording their voices, and allow them to verify this was true. Even then, some rejected the concept outright, saying issues like, ‘So what are you going to do, are you superwoman? Issues received’t change’, or accusing me of attempting to destroy their households.
Not one of the garments within the remaining set up had been tied to a reputation, so the ladies’s security was protected. That meant all of the stress landed on me. I come from a really conventional, spiritual household who by no means accepted of me going into artwork. After I was making ready the Female Challenge, I instructed them I used to be doing charity work. When the reality got here out, there was an enormous battle at residence, together with violence. However this didn’t make me again down. As an alternative, it made me extra decided.
I do know that by enterprise these initiatives I threat being taken to courtroom, being denied permission to work or receiving on-line smears and threats. But when I don’t do that, who will? I’m happy with what I’ve executed and I’ll preserve doing it.
What help have you ever acquired?
There are all the time going to be individuals for and towards, however actually, most public response leans towards this type of work. However I’ve additionally acquired some encouragement. Following the Female and Voice initiatives, many ladies contacted me anonymously to inform me how a lot aid the work gave them, as somebody was lastly saying what they’d wished to say themselves.
Nevertheless, a lot of the help I obtain comes from outdoors Iraq. After the Voice Challenge, I used to be blacklisted and I couldn’t get any funding or permission for public installations, so I began making use of for worldwide prizes as a substitute.
In 2023 I used to be shortlisted for the Future Era Artwork Prize in Ukraine, out of 12,000 functions, for an set up constructing a bridge between Kurdish ladies’s expertise of violence and battle and Ukrainian ladies dwelling by way of the present battle, and I received the particular prize in 2024. I additionally acquired the Alpine Fellowship Visible Artwork Prize in 2023 and the Prince Claus Seed Award in 2025. Researchers have written papers about my work, and in 2025, I confirmed a rough-cut documentary concerning the Voice Challenge in Warsaw and an indoor set up about Kurdish ladies’s expertise in Kraków, Poland. That worldwide consideration retains me going, and I take advantage of the publicity and funding to maintain constructing stress again residence.
How do you collaborate with others?
I work as a person artist. I usher in craftspeople and freelancers to assist make each bit, however most of them ask me to not use their names. They need the cash, not the affiliation. I all the time clarify the danger actually to individuals, and plenty of again out.
After I can, I usher in native ladies to do the work and pay them. For the Female Challenge I had dozens of ladies doing the stitching. For my environmental work, I attempt to contain as many ladies and younger individuals as attainable. For a water competition in 2025, I made big puppets out of reed and recycled biodegradable materials alongside 20 individuals, operating workshops over 10 days so they might be taught to make use of artwork to ship their very own messages.
Collaboration carries threat. After I ran a seminar on artwork and peace, safety forces raided it on the second day and took me in for questioning. However my message to anybody dealing with suppression or violence is to not be afraid. Discuss it; deliver it out into the open. You don’t must be accepted by a corrupted atmosphere round you to simply accept your self.
For me, artwork is an entire universe you possibly can match every little thing into: your concepts, your lovely issues and the issues round you. You should use artwork to strive to sort things. It’s the one weapon that doesn’t damage or kill.
CIVICUS interviews a variety of civil society activists, specialists and leaders to collect various views on civil society motion and present points for publication on its CIVICUS Lens platform. The views expressed in interviews are the interviewees’ and don’t essentially mirror these of CIVICUS. Publication doesn’t suggest endorsement of interviewees or the organisations they symbolize.
SEE ALSO
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Iraq: ‘Tolerance for abuses towards LGBTQI+ individuals has now been made express by way of laws’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Sarah Sanbar 26.Jun.2024
Iraq: ‘We’ve submitted many payments, however parliament refuses to undertake a legislation towards GBV’ CIVICUS Lens | Interview with Alyaa Al Ansari 07.Mar.2022
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