NEW LOOK AT ANCIENT CULTURE—(above) Artist Qais Al-Sindy creates art to spotlight struggles of Iraqi women. (below) “Southern Beauty” by Adeeb Maki with poetic Arabic writings on its sides.
Photos by Lina Chankar
All is fair in love and war.
And art.
Iraqi-born artists Adeeb Maki and Qais Al-Sindy, who lived through the sadistic Saddam Hussein regime, brought their art exhibition “Spotlight On Iraq” to Southwestern College to raise awareness about the hardships endured by Iraqi women.
This is the first Iraqi art exhibition in the history of the Southwestern College Gallery, according to Silvia Lugo, SWC’s performing arts coordinator.
Curator Najah Abdelkader is married to Maki. They are lost soulmates, reunited after 28 years, who brought their romance to SWC and shared it through art to make a difference in humanity.
Abdelkader, an SWC philosophy instructor, said she met Maki around 1976.
They were both born in Iraq and lived through the Saddam regime. They went their separate ways at a tender age and married other people. They both divorced, reunited and married.
Abdelkader said the exhibit was partly inspired by Vian Dakhil, an Iraqi Parliament member who made international headlines with her moving outcry in Parliament to help Yazidis, an ancient people facing extermination at the hands of ISIS.
“Mr. Speaker, 500 Yazidi boys and men have been slaughtered up to now,” Dakhil said in a trembling voice. “Mr. Speaker, our women are being taken captive and sold on the slave market. A genocide campaign is taking place right now against the Yazidis.”
Dakhil broke down in tears and fell over sobbing before she could finish her speech.
Members of Parliament stood up to show respect while she continued her compelling plea.
Maki said he is inspired by Iraqi Poet al-Mutanabbi (915-965). He said he drew several pieces of women to represent their soft and innocent side. Maki said he wanted to show a more positive side of Iraq.
Abdelkader said the exhibition is a way to stand with victims of violence and raise awareness. Maki’s art illustrated Iraqi, Bedouin and Yazidi girls dressed in ancient jewels with Arabic poetic scripts, deep reds, purples and gold. Abdelkader said the world is mostly silent about the treatment of 
these women.
“(I want) to give voice to the women who were victimized and women in general who have been victims in one way or another by a variety of ways, whether verbal, physical or political abuse,” she said. “The violence that was committed in name of political, religious or ethnic agenda.”
Maki said the exhibit is intended to be uplifting.
“We show the peace, beauty and history of Iraq – the real Iraq – not the Iraq it is today,” he said. “For 6,000 years this was the real Iraq, not the violence it is (experiencing) today. That’s why we show our exhibition. To show that we respect women and we love them.”
Maki said his job as an artist is to remind people that behind the violence there is peace and beauty in this ancient society of art and science.
“That’s the language I know,” Maki said. “The political language I don’t understand.”
Abdelkader is effusive when she explains how she fell in love with Maki when she first laid eyes on him.
“I always thought this is the guy I want to spend my life with,” she said. “This is the guy I would love to take walks with. He is an amazing partner and a friend in every way possible. I fell in love with him immediately, you know, but it took us a long time of friendship and we finally got married 10 years ago.”
In 2004 Maki came to the U.S. to marry his “sweetheart.” Together they make sweet art.
