One Room Apartment, 2008/2017

Sculpture and photography

A photo of a new house located in Iraqi Kurdistan. The depicted 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 sense of communal life before. It links the situation in Kurdistan to other socio-economic shifts around the globe and re-formulated, newly individualised societies, which used to be collective. New economic models reshaped the social structure and caused the rise of individualism and singular modes of living.

Forthcoming also as indoor installation, 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.

Written with Aneta Szylak

Sculpture

Sculpture, Protocol, wood, cement, metal, mixed media, 644 x 332 x 684 cm, installation view documenta Kassel, 2017, Comissioned by documenta 14, photos by: Mathias Voelzke

Photography

C-Print, 133 x 200 cm, Edition of 5+2AP

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Hiwa K

**He Who Stares at the Sky Will Go Blind!, 2018**

**0° Blind Spot, Where Beloved is…, 2017 – 2018**

**Pre-Image (Blind As The Mother Tongue), 2017**

**The Existentialist Scene in Kurdistan (Raw Materiality 01), 2017**

**Tonight This Film Will Be Broadcasted In Color, 2016**

**Nazhad and The Bell Project, 2007–2015**

**It's Spring And The Weather Is Great So Let's Close All Object Matters, 2012**

**What the Barbarians did not do, did the Barberini, 2012**

Biography

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 continthuously critiques the art education system and the professionalization 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), Museum Abteiberg (2021) and The Power Plant (Toronto (2022). He has recieved several prizes such as in 2016 the Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Art Award and the latest being the Hector Prize in 2019.

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