The McKinley Foundation is honored to bring the Shadow and Light project to Artists’ Alley and the Boneyard Arts Festival.
A Reflection on Academic Freedom
At the opening reception on April 13, Carol Tilley, PhD, Associate Professor, Information Sciences, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign shared her thoughts on academic freedom in relation to this exhibit. Her remarks are available for viewing on her blog.
Compiled by Beau Beausoleil, a poet and activist in the San Francisco Bay Area, the project memorializes Iraqi academics assassinated between 2003-2012. This timeframe roughly parallels the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq. To create the project, participants from all over the world selected the name of an assassinated Iraqi academic to memorialize with a photograph and a personal narrative.
During their lifetimes, the women and men memorialized in this exhibit enriched diverse fields of knowledge—from history to art, from literature to theology, from pediatrics to law. There is a full complement of academics who studied and taught in the natural sciences: agriculture, biology, geology, hydrology, forestry, even including the study of bees. Each assassination represented an attack on the underlying principle of education—to share knowledge—and served as a threat to scholars throughout Iraq that they were at risk. Estimates of the total number slain run to 700+. Some of their names remain unknown.
In addition to bringing together a collection of art, this project also constitutes an archive, as both a testament to the lives of Iraqis and of international solidarity. Shadow and light inhabit these photographs, as well as stories and bits of information pieced together from news sources about each person’s life and death.
We hope this exhibit will shed light on the conditions of war and occupation in Iraq, and bring connections with Iraq to your community. We also hope these images and personal narratives will honor educators’ labor and intellectual bravery, and prompt reflection on how to reciprocate that care.
Statement written by Beau Beausoleil, Project Director, and Mona Damluji and Heather Hughes, both academics. Special thanks to Jack Welsh, U.K. Project Coordinator.
Participating Artists
Anahid Kassabian | Zsuzsanna Ardó | Beau Beausoleil | Bert Menco | Catherine Cartwright | Claire Marcus | Deryn-Rees-Jones | Diyan Zora | Fatima El-Kalay | Geneffa Jonker | Hannah Kezema | Hassan Abdulrazzak | Jessica Belt Saem Eldahr | Jim Natal | Joe Lamb | Kent Manske | Kristin Scheel | Lani Asher | Laura Russel | Marcelle Hanselaar | Mavina Baker | Persis Karim | Pieretta Sakellariou | Rochelle Davis | Sarah Bodman | Summer Brenner | Tania Baban | Theresa Whitehill | Wendy Miller
Media coverage
Smile Politely (4/10/2023): The Shadow and Light project to show at Artists’ Alley