Behind the Mask

FIELD UPDATE

Hello dear friends,

Due to the complexities of the region and of this period of history we are all navigating, I am trying to keep the weekly updates simple, which is not easy for me, as there is always so much to share.

This week the platform goes to one of our Art Directors, Salam, and her student, a 14-year-old Yezidi girl who, like most of our students, has lived in a tent for close to thirteen years now. That is all she knows; a tent, one among thousands. Chenar has lived in a tent, both seen and unseen, heard yet unheard.

I remember, at the beginning of our journey, coming with a good friend, an incredible photographer who decided that she wanted to spend a night in the camp. She was unable to describe her experience: the lack of privacy, the noise, the footsteps outside the tent, the sobs, the wailing, the fear of the tent burning, and sleeping with "one eye open." It was a one-and-done experience for her. But not for our students.

Salam teaches both the History of Art and various modules of composition and painting. We use art as a means of expression, enabling the student to tell his or her story according to individual experience and level of understanding. We examine each painting carefully. It does not automatically receive a "WOW" from us. We look for emotion. We look for signs of depression, angst, anger, and violence, and many a time we have searched for hints of death or suicide. Teaching art is not just a joy but a great responsibility—to find that which is hidden.

Today Salam shares about Chenar:

Chenar has two passions: art and music. This painting, which she entitled Behind the Mask, took her 13 hours to complete, showing her total connection and dedication to going behind the mask to portray her sorrow and pain, happiness, and the contemplation of her emotions. Her inspiration was The Three Masks by Serhii Voichenko.

Her painting explores the complexity of human emotions and identity, with each mask portraying a different facet of those varied emotions. She says that she is no different from the majority of survivors of ISIS who have learned to stifle their emotions and push them down, well covered and protected by many conflicting layers of skin.

She says that she is 'the bearer of these masks, not showing real emotion,' concerned about the depth of her feelings and what it would be like to reveal all that is inside her.

We host a wonderful kindergarten and early learning center for young children, all of them carrying heavy baggage—some deaf, some mute, their past beginning in captivity. We teach them how to recognize and identify their masks, their emotions. We teach them to make room for emotion. This may be normal in your society, but in the Shingali culture, where every question has only two possible answers—good or not good—to focus on emotions and feelings and to give them legitimacy is radical. It is outside the culture; it is not known. Yet we do it, and we train the young ones to live without masks.

Andre Berthiaume wrote, 'We all wear masks, and the time comes when we cannot remove them without removing some of our skin.'

Kids4Hope allows children to identify their masks, lay them down with their faces intact, and live with the freedom of feeling.

I close with the ultimate reminder from Exodus 34, how Moses would go in before the Lord and, upon coming out, the skin of his face shone. "When Moses finished speaking to the Israelites, he put a veil over his face. But whenever he entered the Lord's presence to speak with Him, he removed the veil until he came out... The Israelites saw that his face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil back over his face until he went in to speak with the Lord."

May we help our students remove their veils and lay down their masks.