13:09:00
Shola Alade
Sunday, May 3, 2015
Ammar Salim Khidhir plans to complete a series of 20 paintings to help the world understand the crisis gripping Iraq.
![One of the paintings depicts ISIL's attack on Yazidi women in the Sinjar area last summer [Mohammed A Salih/Al Jazeera]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_ugLuEh2mvMH73_YA58iivzWuv4dLHzer1ks_hqqEIGe2wtEtlf8SD5GzQ3t7UnIjDhXq-LUDobodoZzSfJX6QlX8bKLO4mTkQlrCJlKWdGRiHOfv9PnhupnJDejh1LhWykEHzOabRBeHDsO12WHnl_2xfjXClz_jXclcA-tT4HQn8s3mh_dX8WwVdhE3v5grvUBxUMsaRJPmQ=s0-d "A Yazidi artist's brush with death")
Duhok, Iraq - In happier times, Ammar Salim Khidhir dedicated much of his art to children, making larger-than-life statues of characters such as SpongeBob SquarePants from materials including
sponge and silicone.
Gone are those days. Now, Khidhir sees himself on a historical mission to "document the calamity" of his Yazidi community at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The 31-year-old painter - who goes by the alias Ammar al-Rasam, Arabic for Ammar the painter - paints from early evening to dawn in the city of Duhok, located in Iraq's Kurdish region. He is now working on his ninth painting depicting ISIL's gruesome mass killing last June of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers based in the Speicher military camp near Tikrit in central Iraq. In this painting, the Tigris River's water is reddened with blood.
"People have of course heard about the atrocities in the news, but ... they don't have much of a real idea of what exactly happened," Khidhir told Al Jazeera from inside his small workshop, whose walls are decorated with his paintings. "I made these paintings so they can actually imagine what happened."
Ammar Salim Khidhir plans to complete a series of 20 paintings to help the world understand the crisis gripping Iraq.
sponge and silicone.
Gone are those days. Now, Khidhir sees himself on a historical mission to "document the calamity" of his Yazidi community at the hands of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
The 31-year-old painter - who goes by the alias Ammar al-Rasam, Arabic for Ammar the painter - paints from early evening to dawn in the city of Duhok, located in Iraq's Kurdish region. He is now working on his ninth painting depicting ISIL's gruesome mass killing last June of hundreds of Iraqi soldiers based in the Speicher military camp near Tikrit in central Iraq. In this painting, the Tigris River's water is reddened with blood.
People have of course heard about the atrocities in the news, but ... they don't have much of a real idea of what exactly happened. I made these paintings so they can actually imagine what happened.
Ammar Salim Khidhir, artistThe rest of Khidhir's paintings focus on ISIL's actions against the Yazidi community, which practises a distinct Mesopotamian faith. When ISIL overran Yazidi-populated areas in Iraq's western Nineveh province last summer, the group's fighters killed hundreds of men, abducted Yazidi women and girls, coerced many to convert to Islam and forcibly conscripted young Yazidi males into its ranks.
"People have of course heard about the atrocities in the news, but ... they don't have much of a real idea of what exactly happened," Khidhir told Al Jazeera from inside his small workshop, whose walls are decorated with his paintings. "I made these paintings so they can actually imagine what happened."
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