The story of Hüseyin Aksoy

The Story of Hüseyin Aksoy

“I work as an alchemist who believes that art is experimental by working and who doesn’t want to limit himself to any material while working.”

Today we want to share the story of a young artist called Hüseyin Aksoy. Hüseyin was born in Mardin(1996). His passion for Art started at an early age ;

He is the son of an 8-headed family. In 2015 he moved to Istanbul and started to study and  completed his undergraduate education in Marmara University of Fine Arts A.E.F. at the Painting Department and also participated in many competitions and exhibitions. He took part in group exhibitions in Taiwan, Prag etc. In 2019 he graduated and since then he’s been working as an independent artist who is already selling his works.

“I didn’t start to do art, I actually dealt with the question of how to do it first, and then I started to question the meaning of what I did, I can say I started like that.” 

 

“Hüseyin, someone, who first sees your work would get amazed by the details. They look like photography. What represents your work, and how would you describe it? “, Rengîn to Hüseyin.

“It changes. Sometimes I start working without thinking about the topic. These days I am inspired by a lot of things. Some of my topics are taken from the history and inspired by daily life and current changes happening in the world. I try to emphasize the topics like a social truth and try to show them that  reality to express another reality from a political perspective. I try to uncover what we are seeing in the society and give it a “bare” reality to see. I use my art to show the reality from a different perspective, especially political-historical  events. I try to show that “seeing “ is not an “ optical” but “ ideological “ process. I want my work to question the thinking of the audience. There is a word I like very much – art doesn’t answer and ask questions – I think I defend it.”

 

“The Last supper ” 

Audio Link https:// http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHwRsc7evNw

by addressing the photographic archives of the dengbej Artist da vinci’s ‚ last supper refers to ‚işine. In doing so, the eyes of the phenomenon represents the third world allows you to look at it again. This audio troubadours (dengbej) melodies object associated with the image, sound, between reality, referring to areas of the sensory version images. In this way there has been track image with images of the works constructed by cultural interact as it also provides sensory experience. The connotation and cultural norms as dolayımlı overas you explore the anachronistic thing spread anti-chronological placing to the context ‚ timelessness ‚ and ‚ just in time ındal ‚ tries to do the highlighting. But a settled culture in almost all households of the same formal properties of cultural object, settled on a common social memory, appreciation and value judgment. It’s culture, the specific objective of everyday life …

“Where do you get your inspiration from? “

“Inspiration is something I don’t believe in very much, I only believe in impulses. But I was for sure inspired by artists and art disciplines, of course, cinema, photography inspired me.” Hüseyin to Rengîn.

What about our culture and your roots about kurdish artist. Does it affect you being a kurd in Turkey and what do you think about the term “kurdish artist”?

“It is a privilege for me to deal with art as a Kurd. I belong to a group of people who have suffered persecution throughout history. Being a Kurdish artist is a state of outcry against all atrocities. As Emile Zola said, I came to live loudly as an artist. But I think there is nothing like kurdish art. It might be more accurate to call it Eastern art, not Kurdish art. I find the situation of Kurdish artists in Eastern art good. Every day it is getting even better. And we started to open up more to the world. This is a pleasure for me, too. Being Kurdish is for me to be a free person with a rich geography, a unique language and art.

“Does it become a priority for you to say I am kurdish?” 

“I don’t say it if no one asks me, because it is not important for me. I would like to be an artist who doesn’t really takes parts in a cultural and political category. 

The young artist had his last exhibition this year in MixerArts but he is looking forward to do more in the future. His plans on his work will continue. In the future he is looking forward to visiting Vienna and work further in film and photography.

“Hüseyin, thank you for the interview. One last Question; what do you think about Rengîn?”

I thank you! It was a pleasure. I think Rengin could be very helpful, especially to the new established artists and to the eastern art scene. I sincerely wish this kind of magazines would increase and more platforms are being created, where artists can exchange dialogues.Thank you for giving me the chance to be a part of this project. Im looking forward to reading more of Rengin. 

 

Hüseyin AKSOY // Instagram: @hsyn.aksy

Interview by Dilan TAS

 

The story of Faek Rasul

The story of Faek Rasul

„The traces will hurt as long as you don’t speak about them”

Rengîn had the luck to meet one of the most well known famous artists and curators Faek Rasul.

Faek Rasul is born in year 1955 in Kirkuk Kurdistan/Irak. In year 1980 he got his Diplom in the Institute of Fine Arts in Bagdad.

He captures the human as a whole with all of its dreams, hopes, fears, desires and passions. For him people become the synonym of being. He unveils powers, which lie behind the visible reality. Here one cannot talk about dismembered bodies or disintegrated spaces any more, but about the „total act“ and the „total picture“.

“When I feel the need to speak I paint” – Faek Rasul

Faek Rasul’s paintings  are in four different phases of development (Black and White, Violet Acts, Gravestone, Myth) They remind us of things, which he cannot or doesn’t want to express through the spoken words.

Not only words also numbers and scripts are his way the express himself. The numbers are derived from a mathematical whole and are developed into an aesthetic structure; and the writings, originating from a collective memory, are transformed into an individual memory.

“The life you are seeking you will never find” – Faek Rasul

 

The Origin of Faek Rasul’s paintings and technique is comprised of a number of personal experiences, which are for example his imprisonment in Irak because of his membership in kurdish resistance against Saddam Hussein. However, Faek Rasul’s employment for literature and painting leads to an inner disruption of his identity. Time in prison prompts his decision to paint and simultaneously prompts yet another point of refrence for his artistic creations.

Traces, remembrances or talismans are what Faek Rasul calls his paintings. He creates minimalistic, reduced works, like evocations and approaches to the irreducible, incalculable openness and unpredictability of human life and the future with the focus and sensitive use of his materials using mostly sand, color and employing hermetic signs:  “Sand as Emblem of Transience, Beauty from Oriental Tradition and the Aesthetics of every day life”

In 1987, the year the political persecution of Kurds in Iraq escalated to finally end in genocide, he succeeded to flee to Austria from Iran. In over 25 years of artistic work in Austria, Faek Rasul created an array of picture series in varying stiles which he presented in numerous exhibitions in Europe, Eastern Asia and South America.

Since over 20 years he also works as a curator and since year 2000 as a gallery manager. At this time he manages the “Kleine Galerie” in Vienna. He has exhibited  a line-up of some of the most important international artists.

Faek Rasul never ceased to paint; he dedicated his life to art.  To the question “What do you think about being Kurdish and a Kurdish artist he says: “After over 25 years in Exile he says that “if you live somewhere else for 20 years than you are a part of it. – I always say that I am a Viennese.”

Faek Rasul  is still active as  a painter and curator and his future plans are to curate a big international Exhibition this year with international artists all over the world.

 

Thanks for the interview!

Website : http://www.faekrasul.com

 

Interview by Dilan Tas

 

The story of Vooria Aria

“We produce something from our experiences and memories and see how they change in the eyes of others and that’s what fascinates me about art. The change of perspectives and the art of beeing and creating.“

 

 

 

 

Vooria Aria born 1979 Sanandaj (Iran) comes from a Kurdish – Persian family. The artist grew up in Sanadaj in a family who are working in the area of ​​space design. His passion for art started at his younger ages. After his talent was discovered he started to learn more about art and visited an art school of drawing courses.

He left the art school after a short time and went on to draw independently. Because of the the moving vocational career of his Vater Vooria and his family moved to Tehran. During this time in Tehran he met there by coincidence an architect who asked him to work with him:

“ Life is full of beautiful coincidences which help us to find our way”, Vooria to Rengin

Motivated to learning more about his passion and to take the job offer he started to visit an art school again.This journey made him clear that he wants to make more of his talent and art and so he decided to move to Europe.

In year 2002 he moved to Vienna where also his brothers live. After a short time he started to study at the university of applied arts. The confrontation with the material and the space around it are the focus of his work. He changes perspective and brings seemingly clear ideas to falter. A change of perspective, as well as the modification of the material. His sculptural works deal with material alienation.

His natural elements are the rope and the slate. The rope made from the natural fiber sisal makes childhood dreams come true: rocking, pulling, wrapping . The construction sites become playgrounds for adventure, winches, pulleys invite you to discover and try them out, even the wet smell, slightly musty, creates positive memories of the first child discovery. However, these beautiful thoughts are soon torn: the rope is robbed of its beauty and turned into a gallows.

 

The lightweight and easily split slate is known in our latitudes especially as a traditional tile. Historically, the old slates and pens are the first writing utensils which were well known in Kurdistan for traditional aesthetic reasons, the graves were covered with light slates – the dead were a bed of slate. Today, however, this fragile material is used very seldom. Vooria Aria’s work focus on these natural elements  while at the same time dealing with his own personal memories.

What means to be Kurdish for you? What means to be a Kurdish artist for you?

“To be Kurdish means for me to belong to somewhere and to the the Kurdish culture and being.  There is a difference between being a Kurdish artist and someone who does Kurdish Art. Art is something global for me. This means art and artists are not really assignable to a nation.

The artist’s future plans are doing more art, being creative, to work in new projects. “I am happy, I appreciate what I have and what I become and I hope to grow more and learn more about myself. Life is a surprising journey full of inspiring coincidences”

We will keep you guys in touch for the future projects of the artist.

Artist page:

http://vooriaaria.net/

20018, Pictures and Interview by Dilan Tas

 

 

The story of Hoessain Kakayi

Kakayi is born in Kirkuk 1959 Southern of Kurdistan. Is s a painter, photographer and a master calligrapher in different styles. He lives since 1988 in Belgium and studied graphic at the Academy of fine Art -Belgium . The artist comes from an artist family: “I grow up loving painting and colors”

The discipline with Kakayi attracts the most attention as an artist is Calligraphy. While in Eastern cultures calligraphy is more tradition it is quite unknown to us and so little practiced Friday. The calligraphy is with us as what the art of beautiful writing.

Kakayi’s works are full of expressions. He loves to discover feelings and different themes like as humanity, peace, tragedy and nature.  He loves to experiment with everything he encounters and uses acrylic colours, ink and all kind of techniques.

 

“I love to ask questions and like to be in search of answers. The language of Art  is for me silence . It tells everything but then nothing “Kakayi to Rengîn 2018

Kakayi had a lot of exhibitions during his artistic career. The artist is happily married to Avin Kaki and works as a translator in Belgium. His future plans are to do more exhibitions and publish a book with his works.

And our last question to Kakayi:

What means to be Kurdish for you? What means to be a Kurdish artist for you?

“I am proud to be Kurdish but art has nothing to do with nationality. To  be Kurdish means to search peace and freedom.”

 

Website kakayi.webs.com/

 

 

The story of Walid Siti

 

Walid Siti investigates aspects of collective memory, cultural identity and personal experience amid changing socio-political realities. His paintings, drawings, and sculptures are subtle yet politically charged reflections on forced migration, exile, war and political paradoxes. His work developed in response to the ongoing upheaval of conflict and processes of transformation prevalent in the Middle East. Siti takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of his native land that is crisscrossed with militarized borders and waves of migration.

 

Born in Iraqi Kurdistan, Siti lived in the former Yugoslavia before seeking political asylum in London during increasing aggression against those opposed to Iraq’s Ba’athist regime. Based in London since then, Siti’s experience of exile feeds off his work, which at times can be read as a poetic observation of the rapid changes in Erbil after its stagnation from years of war.

 

Walid Siti (1954, Duhok) has exhibited internationally. He represented Iraq at the 54th Venice Biennale. His work has recently been included in important group exhibitions at Sharjah Biennial 13 (Sharjah, U.A.E., 2017), Iran Pavillion (56th Venice Biennial, Venice, 2015); Asia Society in New York, NY; and Hajj: Journey to Mecca (Museum of Islamic Art, Doha/Qatar, 2015). His work is in prestigious collections, including The British Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum Of Arts, NY; The Imperial War Museum, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; the Barjeel Art Foundation, Jordan; The World Bank, Washington, DC; Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah, U.A.E. He recently received the Sharjah Biennial 2017 award.

 

Website: http://walidsiti.com/

The story of Yasar Kemal

“ I don’t write about issues, I don’t write for an audience, I don’t even write for myself. I just write. ”

The artist was a turkish writer and human rights activist of kurdish as the origin. He was one of Turkey’s leading writers. He received 38 awards during his lifetime and had been a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature on the strength of Memed, My Hawk

Yaşar Kemal, died in the age of 91, found fame after the publication of his first novel, Ince Memed (1955), translated into English as Memed, My Hawk (1961). It became known around the world in other translations, the first Turkish novel to make a big impact internationally. Kemal was then working as a journalist in Istanbul, but the story dealt with the harsh life of farmers and ordinary people in the Çukurova plain and Taurus mountains around Adana in southern Turkey.

Memed, “ My Hawk „is a sort of Robin Hood tale, rich in autobiographical elements. Its hero, Memed, grows up in a village cut off from the rest of the world and owned by an oppressive landowner, Abdi Agha, who viciously exploits the farmers and their families. A feud springs up between Memed and Abdi: Memed, accompanied by the young woman he loves, Hatche, is driven into the mountains as a bandit and eventually kills Abdi, though only after Hatche has been killed and he himself betrayed.

It is an extraordinarily violent story, told with great vividness and simplicity in language that not only brings the luckless villagers to life but also evokes very strongly the sounds, smells, and colours of Turkey’s Taurus region. The message is clear – the oppressed need to stand up firmly against oppression and fight injustice rather than endure it uncomplainingly. The novel became a classic, even though some Turkish readers do not think it is necessarily Kemal’s best.

Not everyone approved. When a leading Hollywood producer contemplated a film version, he was warned that the Turkish authorities considered Kemal to be a communist and he backed off. It was not until 1984 that Peter Ustinov directed and starred (as Abdi) in a film version of Memed My Hawk. Even then Ustinov was denied permission to film in Turkey.

Kemal was born in the village of Hemite (now renamed Gökçedam) a couple of weeks before the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the declaration of the Republic of Turkey. He was named Kemal Sadık, after his father, and in 1934 the family took the surname of Gökçeli. His parents, Sadık and Nigâr, were Kurdish peasant farmers who had escaped from the first world war by trekking a few years earlier from their home on the shores of Lake Van to live in what is now Turkey’s Osmaniye province, near the north-east corner of the Mediterranean. The only Kurdish family in the village, they spoke Kurdish at home and Turkish with their neighbours.

A childhood knife accident left Kemal blind in one eye, and when he was five years old his father was murdered.His interest in literature began with folksongs. Unable to play the saz – the Turkish long-necked lute – well, he became interested in the world of ballads, and their stories of bandits and protests. Working part-time as a casual labourer in the cotton fields around Adana, he put himself through some secondary schooling but was forced to leave in his mid-teens.
In 1943, he published a book of folk ballads locally, and while doing his military service in Ankara a year later his first short story. For the next few years he combined working as a labourer with offering his services as a public letter writer, moving gradually into journalism and in 1950 served a short spell in prison for alleged communist activities.

A year later, on the advice of several of Turkey’s leading leftist writers, he went to Istanbul and was given a job as a reporter on Cumhuriyet newspaper. It was at this point that he adopted the pen name of Yaşar Kemal.

From then onwards his life was a story of high-profile success: three travel books based on his work as a reporter, and more than 20 novels between 1955 and 2013, continuing to deal with the people of the southern Turkish countryside whom he had known in his earlier life and their sufferings and feuds. He won a stream of Turkish and international awards, though he seems to have been more appreciated outside the English-speaking countries. He was particularly liked in France, becoming in 2011 a grand officier of the Légion d’Honneur. But though nominated for the Nobel prize in 1973, he never won it.

Kemal’s lifelong passion for social justice led him to join the newly legalised Workers’ Party of Turkey in 1962. He also always publicly affirmed his Kurdish identity even when tensions between Ankara and the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ party, were at their height.

In the late 1970s he moved temporarily to Sweden at a time when there was a spate of political assassinations in Turkey. In 1996 he was sentenced to 20 months for an article he wrote for Index on Censorship, but although he asked the court not to suspend it, he did not actually go to jail.

Kemal married his first wife, Thilda Serrero, in 1952, and they had a son, Rasit. Thilda died in 2001, and the following year he married Ayşe Semiha Baban. She and Rasit survive him.

• Yaşar Kemal (Kemal Gökçeli), writer, born 6 October 1923; died 28 February 2015

The story of Amang Mardokhy

The story of AMANG MARDOKHY

Amang Kamal also known as Amang Mardokhy, was born in Kurdistan, where he was trained as an artist. He graduated with a BA in Fine Arts, from Manchester Metropolitan University in 2012 and was awarded the Ken Billany prize for his outstanding work.

His passion for art began when he was 7 years old:

“I am in love with colors. I remember, when I was because my mother gifted me magic pens when I did well at school that year. Every time I draw with those pens, I feel like I’m a little kid again”, Amang to Rengîn 2018

The Kurdish artist took his inspirations at the beginning by some Kurdish artists, especially from Ali Latif and some other realistic Impressionists and abstract artists such as Leonardo Da Vinci, Goya, Picasso, Kandinsky, Miró, and Pollock.

At first, he started to do realistic works and then headed towards expressionism and Symbolistic styles. His works were affected by the Kurdish struggle and the messages were the significance had mostly a connotation to independence and humanity. After he graduated he moved to live in the UK. After finishing his studies he chose the abstract direction of his works

“I use the abstract language, to talk about the effects war had on my life, and today’s current destructions against all humans, animals and environment and all these are carried out in the name of peace, democracy and human rights”

A big part of his work shows his love towards nature and its beauty retailed with abstract language. I mainly work with acrylic paints, however I do also use other mixed materials.

“My dialogue and perspective with life, which I discover and built up, is my main inspiration for my art work. These interactions are sometimes calmful and other times I express my anger, against those powers, that are much bigger than my abilities and I can’t change. However, it’s through my art in which I can express and pass my messages across to the audience”

Do you draw to find answers or to find questions?

“I can say both, the surroundings and my own questions both interact and build an atmosphere that create continuous searching for a few vague and obvious questions and answers of which lead to the last stage of the artworks. However, with time, place and continuous changes, we do get some of the answers we look for, but then we start to ask new questions and that’s why I live with the artworks”

Amang is the chair of the Kurdistan Art and Culture group. His private exhibitions include: exhibition, 1991, Kurdistan Azadi exhibition, 1996, Kurdistan exhibition, 1996, Canada Amang Mardokhy Exhibition year 2008 -2009 – 2010 -2011 in Gallery of Marple library. Amang Mardokhy Exhibition in kurdistan 2010 exhibitin of Amang Mardokhy, 2011, Canada-Vancouver He has also participated in several group art exhibitions and activities Kurdish art exhibition, 1989- 2002 Political Poster exhibition, the Kurds genocide, (ANFAL), 1996, Iran The Kurdish artists’group movement exhibition,1991- 2002, Europe Halabja Chemical bombardment day, 2005, Manchester Art for Peace exhibition, Stockport,Vernon mill Gallery 2005 Hallabja Kurdish artists exhibition in Zion centre, Manchester, 2007 Anfal Kurdish artists group,Media culture Centre, 2007 Anfal Festival 2010

What does it mean to be a Kurdish artist for you?

I am proud to be Kurdish, although it’s created many obstacles in my life. However, being Kurdish, I’ve learned to appreciate and respect the value of liberty, justice, love, and humanity. Being an artist means you have the duty of defending women’s rights of freedom and equality, the same as men. Seeing those brave women, who sacrificed their lives in Kobani to defend all of us, they’ve recorded a new page in history for all the Kurdish women in the Middle East and the world.

The artist is happily married to Chinar Najib and has 3 children. He currently works with dementia patients, in a nursing home in Stockport. At the moment, he works for a project about art and music performance, which will show the different effects that music has on art and vice versa, and the audience will act as an integral third part in this art of work. This project will start in April with the participation of three musicians from UK, Iran and Kurdistan. This work should create a modern art communication through the artistic language and contemporary art interactions.

“I’m very pleased to hear about Ronahî Magazine. Thanks for giving me this chance, to talk about my works. Ronahî means Light! So, it means hope and hopefully with your Magazine’s light our hopes and dreams will be brighter”

Art and Photos by Amang Mardokhy

Interview by Dilan Tas

#kurdish #art #magazine #based #in #vienna #austria #support #follow #like #ronahi

The story of Avin Kaki

Avin Kaki was born in year 1979 in Kirkuk Iraqi. She comes from an artist’s family and graduated in Humaniura (Iraq). Since her childhood she loves to paint. Until 19 she lived in Iraq and moved then 1998 to Belgium to study graphic art and is married the painter Hoessain Kakayi. Since 2005 she lives in the province of Flanders and speaks Dutch, Arabic, Kurdish and English.

In her work she shows the difficulties of the Kurdish culture and the injustice between the cultures, human rights. She also treats the themes equality between women and men and the prejudices about women. Her works are mostly abstract paintings. She uses different techniques to express the themes; such as woodcut, silkscreen, polymer, oil, acryl colors and ceramic materials.

Do you draw to ask questions or to find answers?
I draw to ask question and to find answers. I am always in search of answers. I hope for a world without war without hunger and injustice. So I try to paint my thoughts and question the world

Avin Kaki’s last exhibition was in Brakel in September 2017. The artist lives right now in Gent. She has 2 sons who also make art.

What means to be a female Kurdish artist for you?

„It is not easy to be a Kurdish artist and especially a female Kurdish artist. It is more difficult. It means you must fight your whole live for it because you will not have enough support from Kurdish people in general and people will not take you serious. That’s why we need to fight for it and never give up.“

The artist’s future plans are to do work more as an artist and to open one art education institute about graphic art in Kurdistan so people learn more about graphic- , ceramic- techniques and drawing techniques because there is not so much opportunity to do this kind of art.

What means light for you and your art?

“Light is life. Humans and animals need light to live. Light is hope. Hope you hold to in darkness to find your way. It is also an important element in successful art works”, Avin Kaki to Ronahî 2018

Artist Avin Kaki
Website: avinkaki.webs.com
Photos and Art by Avin Kaki
Interview by Dilan Tas

The story of Ako Kamal

The Story of the artist Ako Kamal « I paint sooner to find answers; Answers that are sometimes untraceable, as I paint with feelings. »

The artist was born 2.8.1982 in Suleimanî, in southern Kurdistan (Iraq) started studying in year 1999 plastic arts / fine arts (painting) in Su at the Institute of Fine Arts, then from 2008 he started studying painting at the Faculty of Art of Su University. In 2013-2015 he completed the first and second Master Degree in Fine Arts and Fine Arts at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Ako Kamal who lives in France is mainly known as a contemporary self- portrait artist. The themes that he uses in his works are the self-portrait, the self-image, the image of identity, the face, the narcissism,the distortion. The main axis of his work revolves around the position of self- portraits in painting in the context of contemporary art. In fact, in contemporary art practice (it) is renewed in various forms. Ako Kamal’s aim is to bring his own practice of pictorial self-portraits in painting back into the context of art in order to question this practice in the light of the concepts associated with it.

« My self-portraits are an attempt to express one’s own image as a substitute for one’s own identity; I try to symbolize my own traits in it. The complex question of the representation of the self, of identity in relation to the external world, also poses the existential question of narcissism. The image of the self is a fascinating illusion that you want to materialize at any cost. Hence the real need to produce self-portraits, to have the feeling of controlling this fleeting image, which loses itself over time, and to fix it in a context where the multiplication of images robs them of any coherence / consistency. I would like to rediscover this consistency / „essence“.Through the self-portrait, I search for myself, I explore in the features of my face my own individuality, and I strive to find them. So too are various techniques that I use in my work to understand: they are different angles, from which I try to control this image of myself, to learn and to integrate, before I come back to painting, the basis of my operation. » Ako Kamal about his Selfportraits to Rengîn 2018 .

The place of self-portraits in painting in contemporary art, and the way in which self-portrait becomes a form of self-reformation for him. An act of self-recognition, of self-recognition through the image of the face, that is, through the portrait of the body.

« I’m interested in the psychological view: the face you have becomes a viewed object, and we become the viewer of our own image. My self-portraits will be the product of this process of looking at yourself in the mirror or in a photograph. The strangest part of it is the feeling that it is the physical and logical self that I do not feel alone in this exchange, as if there is somebody else in front of me. » What does Painting mean for you ? I’m doing more defacing art and I use painting in two ways: as the foundation and beginning of my artistic experience, which as such can be quite restrictive, and today more oriented towards the liberation of my own expression, in the context of the present. This can also be reflected in a reflection on the process of art history, which also goes to a freer mode of expression, escaping their rules; and in dealing with the concept of identity, whether personal, social, or cultural, in the sense that it is about appropriating one’s own image. Martistic inspirations are the way of picturing an expression, a feeling in painting. In his series of self-portraits, he tries to rebuild himself, to re-create through myself, and through the materials and choice of presentation, for we know that the face is the first medium we can use to catch the other. He also wants to introduce a mental duality into his work, to speak of what „I“ is and what is „not me“.

What does it mean to be a kurdish artist for you ? „Being a Kurdish artist does not mean much to me. I could say it means feeling vulnerable, without identity, misjudged“ The artist whose martistic inspirations are the way of picturing an expression, a feeling in painting. He had his last exhibition in June 2017 in the Galery Nîshtîmany ‚Êmne sureke in Suleimanî. At the moment he lives in Paris , works as an artist in many voluntary several clubs .

His plans for the future are to work and create more. He is also preparing a new oeuvre to attend a joint exhibition in the moment.

Interview by Dilan Tas

Translated by Nathalie Frickey

The story of Mehmet Uzun

Mehmet Uzun pioneer of the Kurdish novel in Turkey, will be best remembered on the international stage for the controversy surrounding his novel Roni mina Evine, Tari mina Mirine („Light as love, Dark as death“), an allegorical treatment of the situation of the Kurds in Turkey published in 1988, which features a passionate love affair between a young female guerrilla fighter and a high-ranking army officer who embarks on a search for his own origins. Translated into Turkish, the book was reprinted 10 times and sold some 20,000 copies.

However, in 2001 Uzun was accused by the Istanbul State Security Court of „having supported terrorism and incited rebellion leading to separatism“. These accusations evoked strong protests worldwide; an appeal made to the Turkish high authorities on Uzun’s behalf was signed by Nobel Prize winners such as Nadine Gordimer, Günter Grass and Elie Wiesel, and members of the Royal Academy of Denmark and the Swedish Royal Academy en masse.

Uzun was also supported by the government of Sweden, where he had long lived in exile; Anna Lindh, the foreign minister, publicly reproached Turkey for bringing a case against Uzun because of his writings. Uzun himself always maintained that the novel was a love story, with nothing to do with terrorism or separatism.

On 4 April 2001, Uzun stood trial. Before an international audience which included Yashar Kemal, Orhan Pamuk, Akin Birdal and representatives of PEN, he delivered a speech defending human rights and the right of writing Kurdish in Turkey. Despite the gravity of the accusations, Uzun and his publisher, Hasan Öztoprak, were acquitted.

For the people of the Kurdish region of Turkey, Uzun represented far more. He was the first person from Turkey to write novels in Kurmanji Kurdish, a language forbidden for most of the 20th century in Turkey, and which even now has no official presence in the state education system, and is often decried as a „patois“, a farrago of mutually incomprehensible subdialects. Uzun’s books celebrated Kurdish culture and focused on such themes as love, conflict, political struggle, statelessness and democracy, and memory and forgetting, always suffused with the nostalgia of exile. His protagonists were for the most part the Kurdish intellectual activists who had devoted their life to the revival of their nation. Uzun’s books were banned in Turkey for many years.

In April 2000 the State Security Court in Diyarbekir confiscated four of his titles from all bookshops. This was cancelled after the application of international pressure, especially a press conference by Uzun in Stockholm in which many Swedish writers and cultural activists took part.

Mehmed Uzun was born in the town of Siverek, in Turkish Kurdistan, in 1953. After graduating from the local high school, he continued his studies in Ankara. In 1972 he was arrested and condemned to two years‘ imprisonment. In 1976, after issuing the Kurdish journal Rizgari („Liberty“), he was arrested again, imprisoned and released after six months. In 1977 he went to Sweden as a political refugee; there he remained until 2006, writing six novels and a number of other books about Kurdish literature, in Kurdish, Turkish, and Swedish. He was also active as a journalist and chief editor of the Kurdish journals Rizgariya Kurdistan („Liberty of Kurdistan“), Hevi („Hope“) and Kurmanji. From 1989 until 1992, he was on the editorial board of the Swedish literary journal 90-tal (The 90s).

In 2000 he was elected to the International Parliament of Writers, a worldwide organisation for freedom of speech founded by Salman Rushdie. In 2001 he received the freedom of expression prize from the Turkish Association of Publishers.
Upon learning in 2006 that he was suffering from incurable cancer, Uzun decided to go back home, and was received by the people of Diyarbakir as a hero.