Featured Artist - Shaghayegh Moradiannejad

Shaghayegh Moradiannejad is a Vancouver-based Social Documentary Photographer who studied at the Danish School of Media and Journalism. Shaghayegh’s photographic works highlight the story of women who carry the heavy burden of war on their shoulders.

Shaghayegh records the long-term effects of war on women and children and risks her own well-being traveling through combative parts of the world, using photography to announce their suppressed sorrow. Her documentary effort was started in Iran and Afghanistan several years ago. Shaghayegh continues shedding light on the impact of war on women and children in other areas of the world through her work.
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‘Ash Milk’ Series Statement
“It was the summer of 2014 when the news about the massacre of the Kurdish speaking religious minorities of Yazidi by ISIS made people pay attention to the northwest of Iraq. After the retreat of Kurdish Peshmerga forces, about two hundred thousand Yazidi people were displaced in an attempt to escape from ISIS.

The ISIS forces massacred Yazidi men and their women and children were taken captive. What happened to these Yazidi women can be known as one of the saddest narrations in contemporary history. ISIS had seized their “whole,” and they had really lost their whole lives, their homes, spouse, children, father, mother, brother, and sister, and on the whole, their freedom, soul, and body were all taken captive.

The hopeless Yazidi women tattooed a sign of their pasts on their bodies. Tattoo on their body is like a hole in their past and hope for their future. The designs vary from their husbands’ names who were killed in front of their eyes to their sisters who were lost and there is no sign of them. An apparently favorite tattoo that reminds them of the time when they were taken captive and received a code from ISIS which was their code of captivity… Each prisoner with a code… Each person was known by a number!

Now there is no more code of ISIS and these tattoos on their body were replaced with the codes! A narration of the depth of their pains, the certain proof of ISIS harassment. They did not have the professional equipment to tattoo their bodies hence these proofs are marked on their body using a combination of blood, ash, and their own breast milk.

The souls of these women are still suffering from captivity, even after escaping from ISIS. An endless captivity… They are used to wearing dark colour clothes as a sign of their deep sorrow. The dark and sometimes vague letters on their bodies are the most precise but the clearest narration of the ISIS crimes.”