Before I Die
A global project launched by the American artist Candy Chang to encourage people to express their vision on the issue of death and its reflection on life and about The most important dreams to be achieved before death.
We wrote to Candy Chang and her team to come up with this idea in Najaf and we put the blackboards on Al Jawahiri Street (Al Rawan). The initiative continued for four days and we continued to document all the phrases and refreshed the chalk every time it ran out.
We did not expect the turnout to be large, and we also did not expect the participants to be so serious and enthusiastic, as people came from even the remotest areas to the blackboards to participate. This may be due to the past decades of turmoil that Iraqi society suffered from. Repression and the absence of freedom of expression, as well as the current deteriorating political and security conditions.
Preparing the blackboards with the participation of Ali Emad, Ammar Adnan and Ahmed Fathi
First day
On the second day, a shocking surprise awaited us when we saw that two spots were vandalized and a curved sword was painted on the boards. We imagine that such civil initiatives that encourage freedom of expression have worried some of the extremists and those who benefit from the continued ignorance of the people, and thus the ease of controlling them, and so they tried to sabotage the boards and sent an implicit threatening message. But we simply brushed it off and deleted the swords on the boards and the continued. and people came to write.
Day two
The third day
The fourth day
Also read press reports and social media posts about the initiative
As-Safir Lebanese newspaper Omar Al-Jaffal report
Alsumaria news
New World newspaper
