Jamil Soro (b.1972)

Jamil is a Yazidi artist from the town of Afrin in northern Syria. He has lived in Germany since before the 2014 genocide perpetrated by ISIS, having fled persecution in Syria ten years earlier via Lebanon and Greece. From an early age he has wanted to depict Yazidi culture and suffering, and to show the world what it means to be a Yazidi. Even in his home region in Syria, where relatively many Yazidis lived, it was a frightening experience to be outcast and treated with suspicion. “Every time we said we were Yazidis,” says Jamil, “people took distance from us, went away from us.” Long before the genocide, many Yazidis were forced to hide their identities to protect themselves: “We wanted to say who we are, but we were afraid what would happen, afraid that they would not treat us as fellow humans.” Observing the events of 2014 from Germany, he felt helpless: “It is impossible to describe how much pain I felt; it was impossible for us to do anything,” he says.

In Syria Jamil practised his art from the age of six and later studied while also working in industry. He formally learnt his craft at the Institute of Fine Art in Aleppo and says he has practised every day since. To Jamil, the Yazidi culture is a compelling and worthy subject for his art. “Yazidi people are everything that is beautiful,” he says. “We have faith in humanity and humans. Whenever something bad happened to us, we were only defending ourselves, it was never an attack from us.” Jamil’s untitled painting of a Yazidi woman with a dandelion is intended to give hope to all those who view it – he stresses that each person may decide for themselves which of their hopes or wishes they would like to see represented by the work. The painting entitled Children of God shows a Yazidi woman in traditional and symbolic white dress, the colour of God. “Even when people do not wear white it is still part of our culture,” Jamil explains.

The principal message that Jamil wants to convey with his work relates to the theme of shared humanity: “We want the people of the world to be humanitarian, to “Yazidi girl in traditional robes” see that we are not non-believers and we do not want to do any harm. I want people to learn more about Yazidis.” Furthermore, Jamil wants international stakeholders and those in positions of authority to provide specific help to his people, and to identify them as a community of equal value to all others: “They should see that we are also humans, and we want to be treated as humans. We all have eyes and noses; we are all human.”

“Every time we said we were Yazidis, people took distance from us, went away from us. We wanted to say who we are, but we were afraid what would happen, afraid that they would not treat us as fellow humans.” – Jamil Soro