No Name But Souls Monument

Project Description:

This project is designed and dedicated to remember honor, and present women who have faced violence lost their voices and soul, and are burdened with no name but a code of digits being held upon their stones. Also, to set up a home commemorating their sorrow and raise public awareness of how women are intimidated, assaulted, abused, and victimized by their society every day.

The aim of this project is to create imaginative access to what is, for some, an unimaginable experience these women feel every day, their sense of helplessness, lost in a city with their voices being muted to the grave. A normal act of practicing their freedom might take their soul from a woman to a digit of codes.

The concept and the name reflect the discovered ancient lost cities in Iraq, where most of the building elements that identify a space have disappeared, however, the surviving walls characterize the presence of the city’s old story and continue to bring back the vanished spaces with a glimpse of the past-life experience through their debris.

The No Name but Souls Monument imitates the similar idea of those lost cities, where the story’s spaces are placed on a lower level, but the colossal walls are the only elements standing on the surface of the ground, revealing the hidden stories behind the victim’s soul, and eternalizing their identity.

The main interaction with the project is related to killing women, the pathway is designed to give the visitors an experience with the essence of what’s happening to women through a ramp in between two adjusting walls, each 20 meters high creating a central axis to the monument, as a simulation for the Islamic gravestones.

At the end of the pathway, the verbal sculpture is the first wall facing the audience from the ramp and is engraved with Kurdish Words [ژن، ژیان،ئازادی] meaning [woman, life, and freedom] the wall is sculpted with words rather than shape, creating a prologue for the audience.

In between the two main walls, the audience is directed downward, leading them to the main gallery, which is a maze-like layout, The monument is an interactive project; the walls guide the audience to connect with the main pathway and allow each individual to choose their path from their point of view, one might decide to reach the victory which is the last main wall with the existence of larger bell inside, letting the visitor ring the freedom of the survived victims throughout the red triangular shaped bell. while others head to the No Name but Souls cemetery which is a home dedicated to the women who have been killed in name of honor and thrown away in an abandoned area with no name but codes being held upon their stones.