Bidding farewell to Kurdistan's master of visual modernity
Last month, we bid farewell to Ismail Khayat, the maestro of visual modernity in Iraqi Kurdistan, who died at the age of 78.
He left us with a great artistic legacy, having held more than sixty exhibitions over many parts of the globe, from Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, many Arab countries, some European nations and the United States. He left us although we are still inhabited by his art. Indeed, true creative artists do not die, but are always resurrected from the womb of their deeds.
Ismail Khayat (1944 - 2022) was one of the most influential symbols of plastic art in Iraq in general and in Kurdistan in particular. He has occupied a prominent place in the Iraqi plastic scene and even more so in Kurdistan's artscape.
Ismail Khayat can be rightly described as the maestro of visual modernity in the Kurdish plastic art scene. He started his creative journey by adhering to conditions of the prevailing plastic art discourse, like most artists of his generation. Thereafter, he found himself searching for alternatives in the fertile Kurdish lands where he evolved.
Khayat was the author of the largest painting in the world and by it he deserved to enter the Guinness Book of Records. He depicted the foot of the Kurdistan mountain stretching between Koys Snjaq to Dukan in the Kani Watman regions.
But he is also the author of the most accurate documentation of the massacres that were inflicted on all Iraqi people and especially the Kurds over more than four decades of Iraqi Baath party rule and dictator Saddam Hussein.
That is why his works are truly an historical narration of various stages of persecution, displacement and repression, which he presented in private exhibitions as a reflection of the challenges that confronted him throughout this dark period.
Dreams and recollections of sadness are intertwined in his artistic memory. He once said, "During my childhood, my brother and I had a bird. We started taking care of it, but he died one day and we buried him with sadness. This bird remained embedded in my visual memory. I wished it would not die, that it would always stay with me. That is why I give it in my works this virtual existence. It lives in my paintings as a contemporary subject which symbolises the pain I still feel."
No comments:
Post a Comment