Osman Ahmed trekked with the Peshmerga, armed only with a pencil and a sketch-book
was so cold and raining heavily,” recounts Osman Ahmed, “and somehow in the mountains it was snowing.” It was November 1985, and Mr Ahmed was making an arduous journey that would lead to an artistic one. He had been trekking across northern Iraq with Kurdish Peshmerga, to escape Baathist persecution during the Iran-Iraq war. Unusually for a militiaman, he refused to carry a weapon and was armed only with a pencil and a sketch-book.
It seemed to Mr Ahmed that no one was documenting the horrors of the conflict. He remembers his anguish, after returning to the mountains with the Peshmerga, to find that no radio station in the region was covering the destruction of Kurdish settlements. Then in 1988, during the last phase of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal Anfal campaign, government forces unleashed the worst-ever chemical-weapons attack on civilians in the village of Halabja.
He has since become one of Kurdistan’s best-known artists; his pictures, which memorialise the suffering of his people, have appeared in galleries across the Middle East and Europe, including Tate Britain in London. His emotionally raw work is sometimes compared to Goya’s, though friends describe him as a Kurdish Toulouse-Lautrec, partly because of his small stature, but mostly for his observational style.
“I was shocked to see such vivid and lively works,” says Shad Abdulkarim, a collector who plans to include some of Mr Ahmed’s early paintings in the contemporary-art museum he is opening in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah this year. That is one of the institutions now springing up to safeguard a culture that has helped sustain the Kurds’ stateless nation through centuries of conflict.
“Our political situation repeats every ten years,” says Daro Ola, the show’s curator and a co-founder of the Culture Factory. Mr Ahmed’s theme “of Halabja, refugees, of fleeing home—it’s always current.” Indeed, the parallel with Turkey’s recent attacks on Kurds in Syria is stark. Mr Ola suspects that younger Kurds, tired of politics and war, need to be reminded of their history, and thinks Mr Ahmed’s pictures can help.
Norge Siste Nytt, Norge Overskrifter
Similar News:Du kan også lese nyheter som ligner på denne som vi har samlet inn fra andre nyhetskilder.
'The Only Thing Missing Was Her, Physically.' Inside the Whitney Houston Hologram TourThe late artist’s hologram tour starts in the UK next week
Les mer »
14 Screenshots Of People Trying To Get Cheap Or Free Stuff From Artists That Are Infuriating To Look AtHow dare artists ask to be paid for their work!
Les mer »
Invader's 'Rubik Mona Lisa' beats estimate at Paris auctionA French street artist's interpretation of the Mona Lisa made of 330 Rubik&...
Les mer »
Berlinale study of slavery unearths the roots of modern BrazilMaking films in a bitterly divided Brazil that is increasingly hostile to artist...
Les mer »
Coronavirus updates: Italian towns locked down as almost 150 test positive10 towns in northern Italy, with a population of around 50,000, have been locked down after scores of people tested positive for COVID-19 and 2 people died from the disease.
Les mer »
16 Powerful Songs About Mental Health To Make You Feel Less AloneIf you've experienced issues like anxiety, depression or grief, you'll certainly relate to these lyrics.
Les mer »