{"id":31685,"date":"2019-02-03T23:23:29","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:23:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31685"},"modified":"2019-02-03T23:23:29","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:23:29","slug":"in-mosul-exhibition-iraqi-artists-process-brutal-rule-of-daesh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=31685","title":{"rendered":"In Mosul exhibition, Iraqi artists process brutal rule of Daesh"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nMOSUL: A raven perched on the shoulder of a woman with flaming hair is Iraqi artist Marwan Fathi\u2019s symbol for the terrible events he and his home city Mosul have had to endure.
Three years under the oppressive and violent rule of Daesh and the military campaign which drove it out in 2017 left much of the northern city in ruins. Thousands were killed, rendered homeless or maimed. Those who survived are deeply traumatized.
\u201cI still jump awake at night thinking an air strike is about to hit or that they are coming to take one of us,\u201d Fathi, 36, said. \u201cEveryday is a struggle.\u201d
Fathi\u2019s work is on display in \u201cReturn to Mosul\u201d \u2014 the city\u2019s first art exhibition since before it was seized by Daesh, whose ultra hard-line version of Sunni Islam prohibits most art forms.
Artists from across Iraq are taking part in the six-day show, including many who lived in Mosul when it was in the militants\u2019 grip.
Hawkar Riskin\u2019s haunting work \u2018destruction\u2019 depicts a giant skeleton standing on one leg, while Mohammad Al Kinani\u2019s series of paintings \u2014 \u2018Caliphate I\u2019, \u2018Caliphate II\u2019 and \u2018Caliphate III\u2019 represents the beginning and end of Daesh, and Mosul\u2019s rebirth.
Fathi said the artists who stayed in the city lived in constant fear and despair.
\u201cThere was a time when we considered killing ourselves. We reached that low. But then we thought, what would happen to the children?\u201d Fathi, a professor of fine arts, said.
JONAH AND THE CITY
The show is in the newly re-opened Royal Hall of the Mosul Museum, which was looted and destroyed by Daesh and in the ensuing war to wrest control of the city.
Ahmed Mozahem, another Mosul-born artist, continued to work in secret while the city was under the militants\u2019. Using a writing pad he kept hidden to avoid discovery, Mozahem produced 40 pencil drawings which are now among his most cherished possessions, an expression of what he and his family suffered.
For \u201cCity of the Whale,\u201d his painting in the exhibition, Mozahem drew on the story of the prophet Jonah and the whale, which features Nineveh, the ancient Assyrian city which stood roughly where Mosul is today.
Following their capture of the city in 2014, Daesh went on a rampage, destroying many of Mosul\u2019s ancient sites and artefacts, including a shrine believed by many to be Jonah\u2019s tomb.
The militants not only destroyed the city, Mozahem said. \u201cThey also killed something inside, our spirit.\u201d
But Matthew Vincent, an American archaeologist, says technology can help preserve some of what was lost. Vincent is a co-founder of a crowdsourced, digital preservation project called Rekrei, which collects photographs of damaged or lost monuments and artefacts to re-create these in 3D representations.
At the Mosul Museum, visitors are now able to catch virtual glimpse of ancient Assyrian treasures destroyed by Daesh. One of them, the Lion of Mosul, was a colossal Assyrian guardian lion from about 860 BCE, one of two which stood at the entrance of the Temple of Ishtar at Nimrud, Iraq.
\u201cIt is never going to replace the original but new technology is giving us a path we simply didn\u2019t have before,\u201d Vincent said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MOSUL: A raven perched on the shoulder of a woman with flaming hair is Iraqi artist Marwan Fathi\u2019s symbol for the terrible events he and his home city Mosul have had to endure.Three years under the oppressive and violent rule of Daesh and the military campaign which drove it out in 2017 left much of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":31686,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31685"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31685\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}