Along a near five-kilometre (three-mile) stretch of road in the Kurdistan Region’s second largest city, Kurdish artist Tara Abdallah on Monday unveiled a colourful stitched collage of garments donated by survivors to symbolise their trauma.
"Three months ago, I started collecting the clothes of women subjected to violence by their husbands and families throughout the region," Abdallah, who stitched the artwork that has been strung up across the city, told AFP.
"The reaction to the work was initially very good, but later it was set on fire,” the visual artist told Rudaw on Tuesday, saying she decided to take down the 4,800 meters long installation a day early following the arson attack.
A video taken of a young man speeding off on a motorcycle after setting light to the exhibit has been circulating on social media. The account the video was originally posted from has since been deactivated.
I will leave this here for you guys ... pic.twitter.com/mok4TkLuxa
— shanyataha (@shanyataha) October 26, 2020
“No one forced us to remove it. We did so in order to protect the city, and those people who pass by there [from potential further attacks]," she added. “I thank those people who came out of their vehicles to extinguish the fire.”
An employee at the Civil Development Organization (CDO), an organization that sponsored Abdallah’s project, was also cyber-attacked, noted the artist.
Undeterred, Abdullah says she will keep making her art and find another way to incorporate the survivor’s clothes.
"I reiterate that I will reuse the remaining pieces for my next project in a different way," she said, adding that the details of her next project are not clear.
The UN regularly condemns "honour killings" of women in the Kurdistan Region, which promotes itself as progressive, over sexual conduct.
About 37.5 percent of Kurdish women aged between 15 and 49 are also forced to undergo female genital mutilation (FGM) in the Region, according to the United Nations.
The figure is less than one percent for women in the rest of Iraq.
Rights groups say domestic violence surged globally during the lockdown earlier this year to curb the coronavirus pandemic.
"I heard lots of stories about violence that women in our society endured in the course of my research... Every piece in this work has a story behind it," she told AFP of the project.
With reporting by Rudaw’s Shahyan Tahseen
