One-Room Apartment
Installation, 2011 (2014)
The building exemplifies new forms of living that came to Iraq after the shock "therapy" of the Gulf Wars, of a new political order, and the application of global market economy. This situation reinforces forms of dwelling that differ dramatically from the previous sense of communal life. It links the situation in Kurdistan to other socio-economic shifts around the globe, and reformulated, newly individualised societies, which used to be collective. The work is a reconstruction of a house built recently near the minefields in Iraqi Kurdistan. Erected indoors, the replica building engages the viewer by challenging the relationship between the space that hosts it and the form that fills it up. Big enough to give an impression of a house that can be entered with a roof that can be climbed, the form is supposed to be proportioned in relation to the given space. The formal minimalism in this work is not one related to a certain period of art history but comes from pragmatism and sufficiency. (Aneta Szylak)
Artist's Bio:
Hiwa K is an Iraqi Kurdish artist and musician. His projects appear to be a continuous critique of art education, the professionalization of art practice, of staging and visibility as well as the myth of the individual artist. Many of his works are forms and outcomes of collaborations, and have to do with the process of teaching and learning. They insist rather on getting to know as an everyday practice than knowledge as a formalized discipline.