The exhibition · Online exhibition
Nobody’s Listening: Justice for the Yazidi People
Girl on Sinjar Mountain. Photograph: Zmnako Ismael
Nobody’s Listening also exists as a permanent online exhibition on Google Arts & Culture, published by the United Nations. It tells the story of the Yazidi people, the genocide committed by ISIS in 2014 and the continuing fight for recognition and justice, through survivors’ testimony, photography and art.
It is one of four digital exhibitions that make up the Yazidi Cultural Archives, alongside The Healing Lens, Stories of Thread & Ink and The Art of Survival, created with Yazidi women survivors as a permanent record of at-risk cultural traditions.
“Nobody’s Listening is a tribute to the courage of the survivors of genocide and amplifies their call for justice.”Amal Clooney, quoted in the online exhibition
The launch in Paris
The Yazidi Cultural Archives were launched on 26 October 2022 at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, and in Duhok, Iraq, as part of Healing Arts Paris, a programme exploring the role of the arts in health and recovery.
The evening in the Salle du Haut Conseil highlighted the role of art in psychological recovery. It brought together Yazidi survivors who contributed to the archives with policymakers, researchers and practitioners from culture and health, and included a demonstration of the platform by Google Arts & Culture and the Nobody’s Listening virtual reality experience, The Forgotten Voices of Sinjar.
The archives were created with Community Jameel, CULTURUNNERS and the Office of the UN Secretary-General’s Envoy on Technology, with the World Health Organization, as part of the Healing Arts initiative. Arts + Health @ NYU and the WHO Arts & Health Programme are evaluating their impact on the wellbeing of participants.
Healing Arts Paris ran from June 2021 to October 2022 and also included a charity auction at Christie’s Paris and a book launch at the Centre Pompidou.
The film in the online exhibition
The online exhibition includes a short film made by IOM Iraq, capturing the reactions of Iraqis after they took part in the VR experience during its 2020–21 tour of five Iraqi cities.
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Nobody’s Listening is produced by Upstream XR · See the project at upstreamxr.com