Qasim Alsharqy holds some of the shoes he collected along Sinjar mountain, where Yazidis fled during the ISIS brutal offensive in 2014. (Photo: Submitted to 964media)
'Shoes on the Mountain'
Yazidi artist returns to Sinjar after 15 years to create exhibit on Islamic State displacement
SINJAR — Yazidi artist Qasim Alsharqy has returned to Sinjar for the first time in 15 years, launching a new multimedia art project inspired by the 2014 flight of Yazidi families from Islamic State militants.
Born in 1990 and currently residing in Germany, Alsharqy told 964media that his visit in April took him to Mount Sinjar, where he encountered shoes left behind by families fleeing the Islamic State’s advance. Among them was a child’s shoe, which he described as the moment the concept for his exhibition came into focus.
Titled “Shoes on the Mountain: Abandoned Shoes, Enduring Stories”, the project is set to debut in Germany this September. Alsharqy said it will feature surrealist canvases built around the abandoned shoes, combining sound, image, and found objects to create what he called “a living testimony” to Yazidi suffering.
In one of the valleys, he said he had come across a child’s shoe. Time, he recalled, “seemed to stand still”. It was not just a worn piece of fabric and leather, but “a life interrupted and a story left untold.”
From that moment, he said, the concept for the exhibition began to take shape.
“My project is to open a visual art exhibition using all those shoes in surrealist canvases,” Alsharqy said. He also explained that it is a multimedia art project, combining sound, image, and found objects.
“What has not yet been said about the pain and suffering of the Yazidis so far, I will express through my paintings.”
The Islamic State’s 2014 assault on Sinjar resulted in the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidis, many of whom were enslaved or forced to convert.
The group declared a so-called caliphate that year and occupied major Iraqi cities including Mosul and Tikrit, before being defeated by Iraqi forces, Kurdish Peshmerga, and a U.S.-led coalition in 2017. Though the group’s final Syrian stronghold fell in 2019, it continues to pose a regional threat.
Alsharqy has participated in solo and group exhibitions across Europe. He said the Sinjar project aims to preserve collective memory and confront the lingering trauma of the genocide.
