Kurdistan-Iraq

I met Adalet Garmiany several years ago in Hull. He was a young, visionary refugee with a fervent desire to activate exchange projects between artists in the UK and Iraq. He subsequently formed the organisation ARTROLE and I visited Kurdistan-Iraq with this group three times and have met many artists in very varied circumstances, as well as being involved in a trade fair, visiting and giving lectures in art schools, having dialogues with politicians and cultural leaders and talking at a women’s conference.

The performance MASS was stimulated by these interactions and by visiting sites, particularly those related to the Anfal campaign against the Kurds.

In a museum, I was extremely moved to see fragments of clothes from people buried alive in the recent Kurdish genocides and also the graves of the unknown dead covered in cloth flowers.

These visual references, and the depths of the grief, brought strongly to my mind the work I had done the previous year in London, Bells of Shoreditch. I decided immediately to work with Kurdish women directly affected by the Anfal campaign. I developed ideas for MASS. I returned to Kurdistan in May 2008 to find a space and work with local women towards the piece, which was performed in a disused Ba’thist prison compound.

I was painfully aware that the women shared deep recent tragedy and that the performance space resonated with desperate past dread. Although, as in Bells of Shoreditch, the tranquil, uplifting and lyrical existed, now, a dark, claustrophobic sense pervaded, making the fragments of dresses truly haunting as they ascended, scarring the deep blue sky with their black balloon carriers.

The performance opened between us a profound, non-language based communication and one I will always cherish.