Hiwa K: In Conversation

April 22ND, 2022

12PM - 1PM

Please join exhibiting artist Hiwa K for an online conversation with curator Amin Alsaden, around the work presented at DARC, and related themes in the artist’s practice more broadly.

Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue) revisits parts of the artist’s long and arduous journey, crossing Europe on foot from Iraqi Kurdistan to Germany. In this work, Hiwa K raises questions about how the specificity of place recedes, and a new relationship with the land emerges for those who need to flee their ancestral homelands and seek refuge elsewhere. While in a transitory state, the traveller develops a strong connection to the immediate unknown territory, as a way of adapting to the terrains traversed. After leaving the place of their birth, the crossing of land becomes the new norm for immigrants, the very condition they must inhabit—their feet, the artist suggests, become their new home. The voyage transforms migrants, who need to stretch themselves in order to survive, developing coping mechanisms which mirror their surroundings. The camera follows the artist as he walks across various landscapes, urban and natural, while carefully balancing a reflective contraption, almost a navigation prosthesis that extends his body, in a commentary on the vagaries of mass movement, often hazardous if not fatal—demonstrating that attentiveness to one’s precarious situation becomes as critical as the landscapes being negotiated.

Hiwa K was born in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq in 1975. His informal studies in his home town Sulaymaniyah were focused on European literature and philosophy, learnt from available books translated into Arabic. After moving to Europe in 2002, Hiwa K studied music as a pupil of the Flamenco master Paco Peña in Rotterdam, and subsequently settled in Germany. His works escape normative aesthetics but give a possibility of another vibration to vernacular forms, oral histories (Chicago Boys, 2010), modes of encounter (Cooking with Mama, 2006) and political situations (This lemon tastes of apple, 2011). The repository of his references consists of stories told by family members and friends, found situations as well as everyday forms that are the products of pragmatics and necessity. He continuously critiques the art education system and the professionalisation of art practice, as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works have a strong collective and participatory dimension, and express the concept of obtaining knowledge from everyday experience rather than doctrine. Hiwa K participated in various group shows such as Manifesta 7, Trient (2008), La Triennale, Intense Proximity, Paris (2012), the “Edgware Road Project” at the Serpentine Gallery, London (2012), the Venice Biennale (2015) and documenta14, Kassel/Athens (2017). A selection of recent solo shows include the New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), Jameel Arts Center Dubai (2020) and Museum Abteiberg (2021). In 2016 he received the Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Art Award and had a solo exhibition at KW, Berlin (2017). His “Chicago Boys” project is continuously hosted by international institutions.

Amin Alsaden is a curator, educator, and scholar of art and architecture, whose work focuses on transnational solidarities and exchanges across cultural boundaries. With a commitment to advancing social justice through the arts, Alsaden’s curatorial practice contributes to the dissemination of more diverse, inclusive, and global narratives, by decentering and expanding existing canons, and challenging hegemonic knowledge and power structures. He is particularly interested in how artists and architects interrogate collective agency in the public realm and level institutional critique, while envisioning novel visual and spatial responses to the experiences of alienation and belonging. Alsaden’s research explores the history and theory of modern and contemporary art and architecture globally, with specific expertise in the Arab and Muslim worlds. Alsaden regularly serves as an invited lecturer and critic at art, curatorial, and design programs. He teaches at several institutions, and has published and lectured widely.

About DARC's Events

Digital Arts Resource Centre (formerly SAW Video) is a not-for-profit, artist-run media art centre that fosters the growth and development of artists through access to equipment, training, mentorship, and programming. Our mission is to support a diverse community of media artists empowered by technology, programming and the exchange of ideas.

Our core principles are independence of expression, affordable access to all, and paying artists for their work. Digital Arts Resource Centre values diversity and actively promotes equity for all artists regardless of race, age, class, gender, sexual orientation, language, or ability.

We acknowledge that Digital Arts Resource Centre is located on land that is part of the unceded and unsurrendered Traditional Territory of the Algonquin people. We honour the Algonquin people and elders, whose ancestors have occupied this territory since time immemorial, and whose culture has nurtured and continues to nurture this land and its people.