Anfal · 1988

Between February and September 1988, the Iraqi Ba'athist state ran a series of military operations across Kurdistan known collectively as the Anfal campaign. Tens of thousands of civilians — by most credible estimates between 50,000 and 100,000 — were killed, disappeared, or displaced. Whole villages were razed. Mass graves are still being identified.

This poster is one work in a long line of attempts to keep that record legible to people who will not read a footnote. It is offered as one mark. Not as the mark.

What I refused: slogans (the dead don't need a tagline), sentimentality (it lets the viewer leave feeling moved instead of accountable), decorative grief (pretty grief is a form of forgetting), claim of representation. What's there: a single image, set with restraint. The composition is the argument. The typography is the date. The viewer is left with the obligation, not the catharsis.

Selected by jury and exhibited at Naxsh u Nigar, the Nishtman Strategy Institute's national graphic design exhibition. Originally produced 2020. Recognised 2025. Associated with Zin Studios.

This piece is included on the site because it is the highest-stakes design problem in the practice's record. Every other case is downstream of it.