Exhibition

We have pleasure to invite you for the photo exhibition Let There Be Light! by Artur Rodziewicz which is dedicated to the Yezidis from Iraqi Kurdistan. The exhibition is organized in the scope of the research project How to Make a Voice Audible? Continuity and Change of the Kurdish Culture and Social Reality in Postcolonial Perspectives and accompanies the international conference Uncovering The Past Towards the Future, Uniting Experiences and Values. Kurdistan in Western and Eastern Research Tradition that is due to take place at the Jagiellnian University between 24 and 26 October 2016.

Opening of the exhibition: 13.10.2016, 5.30 pm., Krakow Public Library, Rajska Street 1

The exhibition will be open until 30.11.2016

Artur Rodziewicz

Let there be light! The cosmogonic festival of the Yezidis from the Iraqi Kurdistan

For centuries, in the spring month of Nisan, the Yezidis commemorate the creation of the world by God and His submitting it to its ruler, the Peacock Angel, whom they worship. The main celebrations take place during the Festival of Wednesday (Çarşemiya Sor) in the most important Yezidi sanctuary, which is situated in the Iraqi Kurdistan, in Lalish near Mosul. On Tuesday evening the Yezidis gather in the courtyard of the temple, and when the sun goes down, in the solemn atmosphere permeated with hymns intoned in praise of the emergence of the light and the world, they kindle hundreds of flames. Now, as the so-called Islamic State is grabbing more and more territories, Shingal and Mosul have been seized, and the Yezidis themselves are being exterminated, the Yezidi culture is coming under a huge threat. The exhibition aims to commemorate one of its treasures.