Thirteenth International Conference on The Arts in Society

Abstract

This research investigates and records through drawing, collective memories of the Kurdish victims/survivors of the Anfal, and examines the effectiveness of ‘visual’ documentation of oral testimonies (through drawing), and attempts to answer a basic question: Can genocide be documented through drawing to convey the collective horror and despair? In the absence of photographic evidence, as an eyewitness artist to the Kurdish genocide in 1988 I undertook an ambitious PhD project during 2008-2013 to systematically document memories of 15 Anfal survivors from different regions. I shall present my fieldwork and methodology, research training, development of new sites for the display and discussion of artworks, the collection of survivors’ testimonies and the visual documentation of their memories which have been an enlightening process, I shall discuss my findings along with some of the 355 images produced based on face to face interviews with the survivors inside Kurdistan and will argue since the eyewitness artist’s visual construction of his memory constitutes only a fragment of the collective memory of violence, loss, injustice and pain, why and how the incorporation of other survivors’ testimonies can produce a ‘collective memory’/artistic representation of genocide appropriate to the community concerned. The visualized testimonies are now part of an Anfal museum that equipped with adequate audio-visual documents and testimonies would play a vital pedagogical role in keeping the memory of Anfal alive, and provide a means of telling future generation.