Iraqi Artist Aims Kick at IS Jihadists

posted on: Jan 31, 2015

The Islamic State group militant glares at Baghdad residents with bulging eyes and bared teeth, but neither kidnapping nor death are imminent, because this jihadist is made from a shoe.

A black, treaded sole with the toe broken off serves as his face and nose, while old shoelaces evoke both black headscarf and long hair.

For teeth, zippers dangle into a mouth formed by the space between the heel and toe, and round metal pieces stand in for bulging eyes.

The jihadist is the creation of Iraqi artist Akeel Khreef, who takes worn-out shoes and transforms them into faces representing the “ugliness” of the Islamic State (IS) group, which has committed a slew of atrocities in his country.

“I wanted to portray the extent of the criminality and ugliness and ugly acts of the organisation’s members,” says Khreef, a 35-year-old architectural engineering professor who is working on a mural of two dozen shoe faces.

IS has done much to provoke the anger of Iraqis, leading a June offensive that swept down from the city of Mosul and overran large parts of the country’s Sunni Arab heartland, sowing fear and displacing hundreds of thousands of people.

It has killed thousands of people in areas it controls in Iraq and neighbouring Syria, targeted religious and ethnic minorities, sold women and children as sex slaves and destroyed historical sites.

Source: www.aquila-style.com