Reflections on the archival material, which has been in progress since 2020. In this series of works, I examine the importance of an untitled archive of women’s experiences in South Kurdistan that was collected by Kurdish archivist and feminist activist Runak. This archive has been hidden for over three decades due to social and political issues attached to it. These are some interpretations and reflections on the stories in the archive which allow the silenced stories of women to be heard.
The current gendered dominance of public archives in South Kurdistan that are dedicated to men presents the male view as the authentic witness and testimony to any social-political cause or event. This work reveals social issues through the female point of view and focuses on the role of the invisible woman in changing society through her success and achievements. The stories from the footage are absorbed by the artist’s body and mind as a witness and channelled through her art as a platform for these women to speak and tell their unheard stories.
The contents of this archive are part of a wider systemic problem of violence towards women. The archival footage cannot be shown in its present form. To protect the security of the women who appear in the footage, their faces had to be blurred and their voices anonymized.