Memories in Time

Memories in Time
Still and Moving Image
Length: 35 Seconds (on loop)
Exhibited at: Contemporary Video Exhibition, Surface gallery, Nottingham, 14-27 April 2011
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Memories in Time, is an attempt to investigate the historical dimension of the the human suffering. In this video work I have deployed a moving images in a contrast to a still image to facilitate a dialogue with the events that had a big impact on my life.

I am taking a journey back to Halabja, sitting on an empty door steps, next to the fossilised bodies of a child and father; wanting to have a long discussion, listening to their endless stories. I also want to tell my endless stories.

The continued movement of the paper plain is to represent my constant feeling of compulsory divorce from my past. The paper plain conveys a multiplicative representation; representing the pure childhood that I was denied of, when the real airplanes came in hundreds with poisonous chemical weapons to kill every living being in Halabja. It is representing myself, the games that I played with my childhood friends, children's representation of wars, destruction, but also children's imagination and the desire to explore, the surrounding.

At the time of the attack, I was studying away from Halabja and my family. I escaped the death, but I feel that one part of me is buried with my people in Halabja and the other part is still writing down the memories of destroyed hopes and the hopes that grow high everyday.

The translated poem that was written after 1988, represents a generation after the tragedy, the generation that tried to communicate the event,providing an emotional and logical response to the tragedy of Halabja as a fragment of the human suffering in the current system.

Black History Month

Celebrating Diversity

By Children at Mellers Primary School

Workshop delivered by Jasim Ghafur

22/10/2010

Celebrating The Black History Month is an opportunity for everyone to recognize and appreciate what contribution black and asian people have made throughout history. Recognizing that the suffering and discrimination committed against black  and asian people, must be condemned and eliminated for ever. It is a celebration with an attempt to create a harmonious and peaceful living environment to be enjoyed by every on in the world. 

With the theme of Black History Month, Celebrating Diversity, the workshop aimed to provide a brain and visual exercise, where children from different backgrounds are provided with an opportunity to develop an interest in each others background, to listen to each others stories about who they are and where they come from, finding similarities and learn how to value each other. 

Interviewing each other, describe and draw and painting a portraits of your favorite person; generated a big interest and enthusiasm among children to express themselves and to create a valuable art works as the result of the workshop.  The outcome art work is a true celebration of diversity with its representational element of the value and the beauty of all people across nations and ethnicities.  

The workshop achieved its objectives in producing this wonderful art work by the participating children.