No Limits

We focus on an Ezidi female artist, Irkalla Bû, who took decisions for her life into her own hands, while making creative commentaries on the violence that surrounded her on all sides—through drawings, paintings and performance art. Despite all the criticisms and dangers presented by Da’esh among others, she singlehandedly brought her two daughters (then aged 2 and 7) over land and sea to begin a new life in France.

Ezidi female artists are few. Fewer still are those who have stood up against not just violence against women but also their social oppression. Irkalla Bû is one of these rare gems. She is a visual and performance artist, a women’s right activist, and a single mother of two, now living as a refugee in France.

Irkalla Bû, an Ezidi artist, in France.

Irkalla was born in Shingal in 1990, her family moved to Syria to escape the war in Iraq. Here, she started painting at school from the age of 4: “I used to draw animals and buildings. People said, “Why are you drawing all the time? This is useless for a girl.” She carried on sketching, regardless. Her influences are wide-ranging, from the landscapes and Ezidi traditions around her to Japanese anime and European painters: “My favourite artist is Salvador Dali. I like his surrealist imagination. It gives me the freedom to paint how I like. There is no border. There is no limit.” But society has always imposed borders and limits on her:

“In Iraq I left painting because I thought nobody is interested in what I’m doing. They said bad things, that ‘I’m not cut out for this’ and ‘This is a boy's job.’ They thought I should be like a traditional woman and that I should get married.  But I never got pressure to marry from my parents. They encouraged me to study and do the best for my life.”

Irkalla came from a fairly ordinary but loving family—her father was a car mechanic, her mother a homeworker: “But she’s the best artist. She created 8 children.” On her 3 brothers and 4 sisters, Irkalla said:

“They always tried to support me. One time I painted some children. My older brother said, “Do you think you can be an artist?!’ That made me very angry. We argued and he went out. My sister said, ‘You shouldn’t cry about a simple painting.’ So I said to myself, ‘Tonight I’m going to draw a painting and everyone will say wow!’ So I drew my middle brother. When my older brother came back I was so excited to show my sketch. He was surprised when he saw it. He gave me a massive hug and we both cried.”

Her brother told her about a friend who can help her about how she could improve her drawing by concentrating on the reflection of light and shadow. Afterwards, “For 6 months, I drew with passion. I must have drawn about 100 sketches. It was December, and we were having the fast of Rojiezi.”

She got married when she turned 19, but it turned out to be a difficult and unhappy relationship:

“He hurt me every night. Drawing was a way to keep away from him. I drew from 10pm and then went to sleep at 3am. Then I woke up around 7. Even though I did not have much sleep, it was still better than sleeping with a violent man.”

Irkalla gave birth to two girls, and stopped drawing. In 2016, she took a major step to get a divorce. Not many women sought divorce in her tight-knit community, with everyone advising her to “stay with her husband”. But he had become intolerable to the point that she had to leave him: “I became a free woman.” She then decided to work in Shingal with Save the Children and Norwegian Church Aid.

At this point she had moved into performance art, photographing and filming her performances to put on social media. Considering herself “lucky to not have to be captured by ISIS”, she put herself in the shoes of those who were enslaved. One of her performance pieces was “Slavery Market (March 8, 2017)” where she stands in a black burqa with a sign next to her about her price.

‘Slavery Market’ by Irkalla Bû

Another called “Black Day” referred to the time when Da’esh killed the men and enslaved the women. For this, an actor was blacked up, referring to the masks that Da’esh wore. Behind was a cut plait hung on the wall. This alluded to the many women who tried to cut their hair, and look dirty and ugly so that they did not get purchased by other men. There is also a pacifier hung on a nail, representing the women who gave birth in captivity and whose children were taken by Da’esh. “It was a black day for everyone.”

Her work is centered around the body and the dangers it experiences on a daily basis. One painting shows a pregnant woman chained by each of her fingers and thumbs to a wall: “She is chained by her hands. Each finger is tied with one of the chains. Even if you cut one the others are chained. Even if I sacrifice a lot I am still enchained”. From her navel comes an umbilical cord but it is not attached to a child. Rather it is attached to another chain: “This will tie the child with the same violence.”

Painting of chained pregnant woman by Irkalla Bû

“Died of Thirst” alludes to the countless people who died on Shingal Mountain. It showed her in black, standing next to a bare tree with empty plastic bottles in place of leaves.

‘Died of Thirst’ by Irkalla Bû

“Death by Hunger” shows her eating dust. “Still Alive” portrays her sitting next to a tombstone inscribed with her former name, “Nadia Bashar, October 1990”. She explained:

“It’s a commentary on the genocide and society. We don’t know when we will die. Maybe we don’t even have the chance to have a grave. We could die in a minefield, a bomb, or get shot. Many Ezidi in mass graves do not even have a tomb. Many bones are in a mass grave and are just left like this. They are ignored. Some lie in a fridge in a Baghdad ministry and nobody cares to find out who they belong to.”

Her performance art transmits a powerful message against such injustices and disregard:  “I was the first to do this through performance art. There’s many people who do political news and social news. But if you do ‘artistic news’, it will show the cruelty of the violence in a beautiful and powerful way.”

Yet despite her unique talents, she was criticised and ostracised by conservative members of her Ezidi community. “I was smoking, working, doing art like this, and they used to say bad things about me. I think I was the first woman who kept my children after divorce, which they did not agree with either”. In 2017, she decided:

“to leave her country for Europe to protect her daughters and her art from those who were opposed to her as an artist and woman…Some people were saying, ‘You should be killed. This is ruining our community.’ I had 2 choices: “I stay in Shingal and get killed, or leave and live with my children…I tried before to get out of Iraq but I did not have a safe way. I had a friend from the UK who was a sports car mechanic. He saw my art on Facebook and reached out to me. He tried to help me to put pressure on his MP and other ministries including in Germany to get asylum. He tried for 2 years but to no avail. So I had to do it on my own.”

The journey was a long and difficult one, carrying her 2 year old daughter while her 7 year old walked alongside her, but one she had to do—for herself and for them. She observed how violence is normalised everywhere for girls and women as a part of “community violence”:

“Community violence is something girls and women grow up with. We know the man hurts the wife—it is not new. But it’s not pure violence. Even though it involves domination from men, there is also love and obligation in community violence. And it’s not everywhere in the community. But we still grow up with the idea that men control women. Why can’t women make changes and live their own lives? Women are not allowed to be free, and  even to be happy.

ISIS violence against women is very different to community violence. It is just pure violence. In 2014 they started selling women! This is a world of technology, peace and freedom. How can this slave market arise in 2014? Why did nobody try to help us?”

When she got to Greece, a woman who she befriended in a NGO realised her talents and gave her paints and canvas. Irkalla painted “Me” of herself alone with her daughters in Greece: “At the time I was playing with my hair a lot. It was like a sign of anxiety.”

‘Me’ by Irkalla Bû

She saw people kissing and courting in public spaces for the first time in her life: “I thought there were some actions we should keep in private. Exposing your feelings is like exposing your body. That is why this woman in my painting is without clothes.” Another unfinished artwork is of a woman taking off her own clothes. She asked herself: “How does it feel if someone takes off your clothes when a captured woman has no control of our body. It’s a fundamental part of the genocide.” Her paintings of a mountain of breasts refer to the many children who died in the genocide:

“If a woman has a newborn, and the child dies, they feel it most in their breasts. Their breasts are still producing milk, but the child is not there. They cannot cut off their breasts to get rid of this pain. Many women are like this in the world. They cannot talk about their body, their pains. They can only talk about the child who died. But not about the pain left in women’s bodies.”

Eventually arriving in France in 2019, she began a life of work and living on a minimal wage. Again her art took a backseat until she was invited to the workshop with other Ezidi people that we organised with Jason Noah and Kheder H. Daham in June 2026. She reflected: “It was difficult to paint with all these people after so long. Usually I paint after midnight with just myself listening to some music. Here there were many people talking to each other in a basement room that was open to the street.” Still she enjoyed tapping into her suppressed talents. For an exercise involving painting the limitless sky, she painted a broken mirror surrounded by 6 women in the dark cautiously coming forwards. She elaborated:

“They are trying to see themselves in this mirror, to see how they look and discover a new thing. In our community a man decides what a woman should do. This time women are trying to do their own thing secretly, go out, and become their own woman.”

Painting of shattered mirror by Irkalla Bû in workshop.

There is no doubt that due to all her ordeals and her unlimited imagination, Irkalla herself is more than just a survivor, and more than just her own woman. Her two daughters, Ghada (aged 11) and Layali (aged 16), too have drawn inspiration from her and the world around them to produce their own artworks. Like mother, like daughter: creativity begets creativity.

Raminder Kaur and Farhad Shomo Roto, June 2026