Project Description:
The project is designed and dedicated to remember honor, and present women who have faced violence lost their voices and soul, and are burdened with no name but a code of digits being held upon their stones. Also, to set up a home commemorating their sorrow and raise public awareness of how women are intimidated, assaulted, abused, and victimized by their society every day.
The aim of this project is to create imaginative access to what is, for some, an unimaginable experience these women feel every day, their sense of helplessness, lost in a city with their voices being muted to the grave. A normal act of practicing their freedom might take their soul from a woman to a digit of codes.
Project Entrance:
The main interaction with the project is related to killing women, the pathway is designed to give the visitors an experience with the essence of what’s happening to women through a ramp in between two adjusting walls, each 20 meters high creating a central axis to the monument, as a simulation for the Islamic gravestones.
At the end of the pathway, the verbal sculpture is the first wall facing the audience from the ramp and is engraved with Kurdish Words [ژن، ژیان،ئازادی] meaning [woman, life, and freedom] the wall is sculpted with words rather than shape, creating a prologue for the audience.
The monument is an interactive project; the walls guide the audience to connect with the main pathway and allow each individual to choose their path from their point of view, one might decide to reach the victory wall which is the last main wall with the existence of larger bell inside, letting the visitor ring the freedom of the survived victims throughout the red triangular shaped bell. while others head to the No Name but Souls cemetery which is a home dedicated to the women who have been killed in the name of honor and thrown away in an abandoned area with no name but codes being held upon their stones.
Bell of Lost Voices:
The sound of small bells created by the breeze moving through the walls, each bell representing the lost voices of these women raising their voices together in seeking help and survival, led the passenger to the final main wall, known as the wall of victory, which carries a larger bell inside, allowing the visitor to feel the ring and freedom of the survived victims throughout the red triangular shaped bell.
No Name But Souls Cemetery:
In this region, women’s corpses killed by their families would be thrown away and not buried, they have no place, no name but marks on their dead bodies, and authorities would bury and label them with codes. No.17 was strangled to death with a purple scarf on, and No. 46 was shot to death wearing a red dress.
Based on these agitating stories The no name but Souls monument and cemetery came from the agony of these stories. The cemetery in the project is the reflection of this story and designing it was one of the hardest and most sensitive spaces in my project.
Scan the QR Code to witness the real inspiration behind this project.
The surrounding walls in the landscape are each dedicated to a woman killed by an act of violence and engraved with their name and story.
In between the two main walls, the audience is directed downward, leading them to the main gallery, which is a maze-like layout.
The layout of the gallery reflects the walls outside, creating a maze-like layout for the audience, trying to find their way to the central part of the space, which is a combination of vertical elements engraved with words integrated with light, water, and tree. The voided roof allows light to pass and lit the trees penetrating the roof, this enhances the audience to visualize the intended message when entering the Space and undergoing an expressive journey throughout the gallery.
The main gallery’s central feature:
The Main Gallery's central point has pillars in the water with trees growing through the roof, each of which is inscribed with the names and codes of these women.
