Yezidi – Young Girl

In the fall of 2015, I decided to try to do something to help the Yezidi people who were being massacred, enslaved and tortured by the ISIS terrorist, without much people being aware of the nightmare their were going through.

I went to work. I thought mosaics of the eyes of the refugees would be the best way to get the world’s attention. After all, everybody remember the eyes of the young Afghan girl who made the cover of National Geograpahic in the 80’s.

The eyes are the mirror of the Soul, I wanted to capture the soul of these people, to share them with the world so people would become aware that the kind of things which happened 70 years ago in Germany can still happen today – in any country –  if we do not pay attention.

I built 8 mosaics, the eyes of 6 Yezidi people. 5 children, 1 young woman, a soldier fighting back for her people.

Yezidi Young Girl is the portrait of a young girl who must not be older than 6. She had bee wandering in the desert and been badly sunburnt.

Now we have preconceived ideas that everybody in the Middle East are brown eyed – dark haired people (Except for Jesus, who is at least in the Occident, very often represented as a blond, blue eyed man), and you know what, if you look at Yezidi people’s pictures or if you just go to Jerusalem – mostly among the Palestinian people –  you will find lots of fair complexions…

I wanted these mosaics to be really special so I came up with a new technique, I called it “Opus Pixellatum”. I had been thinking about it for a while, but decided to give it a try. To my knowledge, nobody makes mosaics in this way, and the result is stunning.

I will donate 50 % of the profit of the sale of these mosaics to the Free Yezidi Foundation, an organization dedicated to helping the Yezidi People.