A RAVEN perched on the shoulder of a woman with flaming hair is Iraqi artist Marwan Fathi’s symbol for the terrible events he and his home city Mosul have had to endure. Three years under the oppressive and violent rule of IS and the military campaign which drove it out in 2017 left much of the northern city in ruins. Thousands were killed, rendered homeless or maimed. Those who survived are deeply traumatised. “I still jump awake at night thinking an air strike is about to hit or that they are coming to take one of us,” Fathi said. “Every day is a struggle.” Fathi’s work is on display in Return to Mosul — the city’s first art exhibition since before it was seized by IS, whose version of Islam prohibits most art forms.

Artists from across Iraq are taking part in the six-day show, including many who lived in Mosul when it was in the militants’ grip. Hawkar Riskin’s haunting work ‘Destruction’ depicts a giant skeleton standing on one leg, while Mohammad Al Kinani’s series of paintings — ‘Caliphate I’, ‘Caliphate II’ and ‘Caliphate III’ represents the beginning and end of IS, and Mosul’s rebirth. The show is in the newly re-opened Royal Hall of the Mosul Museum, which was looted and destroyed by IS and in the ensuing war to wrest control of the city.

Following their capture of the city in 2014, IS went on a rampage, destroying many of Mosul’s ancient sites and artefacts, including a shrine believed by many to be Prophet Jonah’s tomb. But Matthew Vincent, an American archaeologist, says technology can help preserve some of what was lost. Vincent is a co-founder of a crowdsourced, digital preservation project called Rekrei, which collects photographs of damaged or lost monuments and artefacts to re-create these in 3D representations. At the Mosul Museum, visitors are now able to catch virtual glimpse of ancient Assyrian treasures destroyed by IS. One of them, the Lion of Mosul, was a colossal Assyrian guardian lion from about 860 BCE, one of two which stood at the entrance of the Temple of Ishtar at Nimrud, Iraq. “It is never going to replace the original but new technology is giving us a path we simply didn’t have before,” Vincent said.

Published in Dawn, February 4th , 2019