Sahar        Tarighi

"Against Forgetting: Anfal Genocide II"

2022, Ceramics, wood, plexiglass, metal, dry ice, water, black paint and video, Size: Variable.

 

Against Forgetting: Anfal is an installation rooted in the collective wounds of the Kurdish people and the enduring trauma of the Anfal genocide, which refers to a verse in the Quran and continues to shape Kurdish memory and land to this day. Between 1986 and 1988, the Ba'athist regime carried out a brutal military campaign known as Anfal, aimed at Arabizing strategic and oil-rich areas of Southern Kurdistan. This campaign unfolded in eight phases, marked by chemical warfare, mass executions, forced displacement, the destruction of villages, and systematic erasure. It is estimated that over 182,000 Kurdish civilians, including women and children, were killed. Even decades later, mass graves continue to be unearthed—a persistent rupture in Kurdish memory and geography.

 

My memory of Anfal is both personal and collective. As a child, I witnessed families fleeing Southern Kurdistan under the violence of Saddam Hussein’s regime. In my hometown in Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan), local families—mine included—opened their homes to these displaced survivors. These experiences left an indelible imprint on me.

 

I use the visual language of the laboratory—a transparent plexiglass box—as a metaphor for the body and land under chemical assault. The ephemeral reaction of dry ice references the mustard gas that the Ba'athist regime deployed on civilians. I activated the dry ice within the box, recording the moment—the silent instant of exposure and suffocation. This captured moment is now embedded in the installation as a video layer. The figurative ceramic sculptures, fired using the Raku technique, embody the sensation of suffocation—created by cutting oxygen from the firing process.

 

This work is a dedication to those who perished and to the survivors who continue to carry these wounds across generations. It speaks to the body, the land, and the unfinished grief that remains active—where the past is not over but continues to unfold beneath the surface.