The Cycle That Brought Me, This Self, and Art Together
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.13169/jinte.6.1.0005 |
| Pages | 51-58 |
| Published date | 11 November 2022 |
| Date | 11 November 2022 |
| Author | Niga Salam,Bzhwen Jamal |
| Subject Matter | Kurdish art,construction of gender,Iraqi Kurdistan,intersectionality,conflict |
Journal of Intersectionality
51DOI: 10.13169/jinte.6.1.0005
The Cycle That Brought Me, This Self, and Art Together
Niga Salam and Bzhwen Jamal
Artists, Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan
Abstract: This account details one individual’s struggle with the social construction of womanhood in
Kurdish society, those roles that females are taught, misogyny and self-hatred that they see deeply imbed-
ded in Kurdish society. Connecting their artwork to their private self, the authors open the space of their
personal struggles with gender identication and being queer.
Keyword: Kurdish art, construction of gender, Iraqi Kurdistan, Intersectionality, conict
This essay is a look into one’s life, my life, as a young person living in Kurdistan. The challenges
that I face through my perspective may not reect everyone’s life experiences but are certainly
similar or even the same challenges faced by those who are deeply questioning the construction
of gender in Kurdish society. Through my artwork, I show how I appear dierently in society. For
me, the geopolitical, social, and personal aspects of my story are important to help you dive deeper
into my artistic visions and to see how I approach the questions that I have, and to help you get the
full experience out of the artworks that I have displayed. Often, I think that even our personal lives
are part of a massive tornado of religion and politics where we are viewed not as human beings
but rather as chess pieces in a larger game. However, the chess pieces have feelings, they feel their
helplessness, and we collectively suer great mental health which topples down to the tiny detail of
our lives. On the worst days, we are hurt, and on the better days, we use ignorance as a valid reason
to avoid what we go through and live on.
Is My life My Life?
As a person who was born and raised to be a woman, day by day, I get further away from the idea
of my “femineity” being a fact about me that was determined simply by the circumstance of what
genitals I was born with. It is an identity that I have struggled with but one which my life revolves
around. Who I am becomes a blurry line of many urgent questions as to who I am and who I
would be, apart from what I have been taught to be. In this way I am working through a process of
relearning myself and my gender. It is something that I have been engaged with for quite a while.
In one of my latest art projects entitled “-ing” (Figure 1) I address this highly personal process
through work that demonstrates a simultaneous stream of personal change, moments in my pro-
cess of change and self-discovery, juxtaposed with the rather ironic display of societal views of my
state of change through audience notes on the artwork. Through this essay I will dive into my own
personal life to show the challenges and obstacles that I have encountered. Through this, I hope to
be able to oer a glimpse of insight into this life and to dissect how those obstacles and my process
of self-discovery reect back on me in the same way but on a dierent scale.
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