5. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU ARE BURNING?, video (4 42 )

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1 EN HIWA K MOON CALENDAR FOR A FEW SOCKS OF MARBLES, 2012 wall stickers courtesy of the artist and Kamel Lazaar Foundation (Tunis) 2. WHAT THE BARBARIANS DID NOT DO, DID THE BARBERINI, 2012 sand 3. THE BELL PROJECT, war metal waste, wood, 2 channel video (35 25 en ) Collezione La Gaia, Busca 4. THIS LEMON TASTES OF APPLE, 2011 video in Kurdish language (13 26 ) 5. DO YOU REMEMBER WHAT YOU ARE BURNING?, video (4 42 ) 6. PIN DOWN, channel video installation (34 12 ) / commissioned by De Appel (Amsterdam) 7. QATEES, 2009 mixed media installation Collezione La Gaia, Busca 8. PRE-IMAGE, PORTO, 2014 video, in English language (6 35 ) courtesy of the artist and S.M.A.K., Ghent 9. IT S SPRING AND THE WEATHER IS GREAT SO LET S CLOSE ALL OBJECT MATTERS, 2012 mixed media installation courtesy of the artist and collection Maxim Zundel 10. ONE ROOM APARTMENT, 2008 c-print 11. VIEW FROM ABOVE, 2017 video in English language (12 27 ) / commissioned by documenta14 (Kassel) 12. DIAGONAL, 2008 c-print 13. MOON CALENDAR, 2007 video (12 16 )

2 HIWA K Moon Calendar This solo exhibition is focused on videos, performances and installations from the last 10 years of the artistic endeavours undertaken by Hiwa K ( 1975, Kurdistan, Iraq). During the second Gulf War in the 1990s, the artist was compelled to flee his country for political reasons. He travelled on foot for more than five months, crossing Iran to reach Turkey, Greece, Italy and France. This kind of placelessness is expressed by Hiwa K in terms of a sensitive balance subject to horizontal and vertical forces: including gravity, horizontal movements and hierarchies among people, among human beings and nature, among citizens and governors. Hiwa K uses his identity, his body, music and play as elements of a universal language offering an insight into the story of his life and expressing his idiosyncratic take on globalisation and its impact on a wider social and geopolitical reality. The paradox of belonging to and being alienated from is of vital importance in the artist s life and work. His hidden surname underlines his rootlessness and his involvement in identity issues. The letter K appears as a single, floating letter that does not seem to be his or his family s name. Hiwa K s homeland is also a rather abstract concept: Kurdistan has no precise borders and is inhabited by various ethnic groups. Extending to parts of Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Syria and Armenia, Kurdistan is dependent upon different national governments. Movement and flexibility have therefore become core concepts and formal starting points within Hiwa K s work. Having fled his homeland, the artist is constantly shifting his gaze from horizontal (e.g. from within landscapes) to vertical (e.g. bird s eye view of maps). He seems to be hypervigilant about everything and everyone around him. Youthful memories, local traditions, anecdotes about his family and friends, everyday encounters, history, current events and politics serve as source material he interweaves to form a body of work that often adopts a pragmatic approach to intricate ideas and offers alternative solutions. The title Moon Calendar suggests an alternative take on time and its passage. It is not only the name of one of the works in this exhibition but can also be interpreted in a broader sense as another form of orientation and navigation in the world and in life. It could be construed as a metaphor for the interplay between Eastern, circular thinking and Western, linear (time-bound) thinking. Various calendars have been developed throughout history, including calendars based on the position of the sun (e.g. Central European time) and others premised on that of the moon (e.g. Islamic and Jewish). Attempts have made at regular intervals to coordinate both approaches. But there are always differences, such as between me, us and others. Hence we are compelled to embrace diversity. 1 For a Few Socks of Marbles, 2012 When he was a child, Hiwa K first lived in an Arab neighbourhood and then in a Kurdish one. People in the Arab neighbourhood called him a Kurd because of his accent. Later on, in the Kurdish one, he was referred to as an Arab, because his Kurdish language had acquired an Arabic timbre and because of his clothing. He was the only one who did not wear a pair of shirwal, the traditional baggy trousers typically worn by Kurds. Marbles was played in both neighbourhoods but with different game rules and techniques. The Kurdish children played mushien, an intricate game involving horizontal hand positions in which marbles changed hands only sporadically. The Arab children played tannab, a marble game with almost no restrictions but significant consequences. If you were lucky, you could win 25 marbles in the space of one game. At the same time, the risk of losing a lot of marbles was much bigger. When Hiwa told his Kurdish playmates about the Arabic version, they were attracted by the game s freedom and potential profitability. 2

3 Using the vertical hand position of the Arabic variation, which only Hiwa could master, he managed to defeat the whole street. He subsequently sold the marbles back to his friends and used the proceeds to get his mother to buy a pair of shirwal for him. From then on, he was accepted in his neighbourhood and no one called him an Arab again. The horizontal hand positions of the Kurdish mushien and the vertical ones of the Arab tannab can be seen as a metaphor for the difference in access to knowledge between Kurds, who are more restricted, and Arabs, to whom a broader bird s eye view is accessible. 2 What the Barbarians did not do, did the Barberini, 2012 This sand sculpture was designed by Hiwa K using a centuries-old method of calculation. The result was deployed to build a wooden mould for reconstructing the sculpture at various sites. The title of this work refers to the criticism levelled at Maffeo Barberini or the warmongering 17th-century Pope Urban VIII. He was blamed for using bronze from the Pantheon s portico to make the papal baldachin and for his canon foundry. Bronze has been used throughout history for both warfare and art. The military exercise of power connects it with a visual display of power in some respects. What the Barbarians did not do, did the Barberini enables Hiwa K to link the Pantheon in Rome with an inhospitable area of northern Iraq. A foundry on the outskirts of Sulaymaniyah uses metal collected from the battlefields of the Iraq-Iran War, the Gulf Wars and the Syrian Arab Spring to be recycled as a raw material for the metal industry. The battlefield metal is sorted, melted and cast in sand moulds by the manager Najad and his workers. The sand moulds reminded Hiwa K of the coffers in the Pantheon dome. The association led to this sand sculpture, a material form that slowly disintegrates. Such temporary constructions are typical of Hiwa K s work. They come in various forms, such as ad hoc interventions and performances. The artist s choice of temporary media is a reflection of his misgivings about the eternal character of art and can also be seen as a metaphor for the instability he experienced when leaving his country. 3 The Bell Project, The Bell Project is also partly set in Najad s foundry in northern Iraq. The man s business is somewhat controversial: he became rich by selling metal from war weapons left behind on the battlefields in his region. An alternative interpretation of his business suggests that Najad dismantles weapons and turns them into raw materials to make objects that can be used in everyday life. In times of war and a shortage of bronze, bronze ornaments, sculptures and church bells, were often melted to make weapons. As with Najad s company, Hiwa K reversed this tradition in the context of this project. He had battlefield metal melted into rods to make a church bell. A double video shows the creation of the bell and provides some background to the process. Hiwa K had the Iraqi-recycled remains of weapons shipped here by Italy and other countries for the wars in the region transferred to a 700-year-plus bell foundry in Crema, northern Italy. He became acquainted with Otavio, who worked in the family business and was a descendant of a certain Barigozzi, who used to oversee the Venetian Arsenal, a complex of shipyards and armories, until political problems compelled him to flee to the region around Milan, where he opened a foundry casting bells, using his knowledge of canon manufacturing techniques. In keeping with tradition, every bell is decorated. The period when this bell was being made coincided with the time Islamic State began plundering and destroying historical objects in the Mosul Museum in 3

4 northern Iraq. As a symbolic gesture, Hiwa K had figures from this destroyed heritage immortalised on the bell. It is his way of attacking Islamic State s involvement in the valuable heritage trade on the margins of the oil and arms market. During the Venice Biennale in 2015 the bell was showcased in the Arsenal, which was once the workplace of Barigozzi. 4 This Lemon Tastes of Apple, 2011, Iraq, 17 April This video documents an intervention by Hiwa K in Sulaymaniyah on 17 April On that day, one of the last marches, after eight weeks of non-stop civilian protests, made its way through the city. The international media had paid very little attention to the protest movement, despite it lasting a long time and being brought to a brutal end by the local government s armed militias. This uprising against the (theoretically) democratically elected politicians disappeared into the shadows, as the media reports were then mainly focused on uprisings in other Middle Eastern countries. Hiwa K joined the march, playing the harmonica scene from Once Upon a Time in the West, a film that represents the ultimate promise of freedom associated with Western societies and democracy. Evocative of the demonstrators, the famous melody became a protest signal, an appeal for progress, adding a further dimension to the event s rowdy atmosphere. Government militias put up some resistance by firing tear gas, with the demonstrators using lemons as protection. Hiwa K s eyes and respiratory tract were also irritated by the gas. These images of Hiwa K s intervention were filmed by photojournalists and bystanders. The artist edited the material provided by others to incorporate it into a video, thereby calling into question the individual authorship of artists. Hiwa K s participation in the protest is also ambivalent: he is undeniably part of it but stands out as a performer and observer. This video was deliberately not subtitled to keep us at a distance from the event, while the demonstrators slogans remain connected to the local identity of the place where the protest was organised, and the demonstration retains its uniqueness with regard to demonstrations in other places. The title of the video, This Lemon Tastes of Apple, refers to the gas attacks that Saddam Hussein had carried out during the genocide of the Kurds in Survivors testified that the poisonous fumes of the chemical attacks had the smell of sweet apples. The odour remains strongly associated with the political memory of Iraq. On 17 April 2011, the day of Hiwa K s performance, also in Sulaymaniyah but on Saray Azadi or Freedom Square, the platform from which activists had addressed the people during the previous months was set on fire. Meanwhile, legal demonstrations in the country were banned. 5 Do You Remember What You Are Burning?, 2011, Iraq, 25 April 2017 On 25 April 2011, only a week after the This Lemon Tastes of Apple performance, Hiwa K launched another initiative in the same neighbourhood. He made an announcement about a gathering on Saray Azadi or Freedom Square next to the destroyed stage for protesters. The local government issued a ban on the assembly of groups of three or more people. Nonetheless, a group of student activists arrived and, according to the artist s demand, read a book of their choice with a magnifying glass directing it precisely in such a way that sunshine burned away the text letter by letter. The action conjures up associations with historical book burning campaigns but differs from them thanks to the care and precision of the happening. The intervention originated not with a governing body for the purpose of destroying or censoring heritage but was carried out by citizens hitting out at those in power on the basis of a subtle approach. The performance sowed confusion among the militias present, encouraging them to converse with the activists and blurring the boundary between both sides. 4

5 6 Pin Down, 2017 This three-part video, whose sound we may have unwittingly picked up before, shows an intellectual wrestling game between Hiwa K and Bakir Ali, a Kurdish existentialist thinker. They are exchanging ideas about their past, about what it means to be a Kurd today, about art and artists, about rootlessness, about horizontalism versus verticalism, about a flexible understanding of the world, about football and about the connection between colonialism and existentialism. Here too, Hiwa K uses a form of play as a means of expression. He and Bakir Ali wrestle with each other. Literally and intellectually. Their relationship is constantly evolving in both their physical and poetic philosophical power game. Sometimes Hiwa forcefully gains the upper hand, sometimes Bakir holds sway. Dominance at language level is also constantly shifting. The way in which they relate to each other both horizontally and vertically keeps shifting. This is not supposed to be a staged performance but a dialogue that turns organically into a struggle when the conversation briefly comes to a halt. Hiwa K and Bakir Ali look back on the ideas developed by European existentialist philosophers and writers, such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Albert Camus, on the freedom of the individual and talk about their impact on Iraq. They consider the confusion surrounding the concept of individualism in group-oriented societies, such as their homeland, until the 1980s and challenge its neoliberal application in the light of the claim that personal freedom can be guaranteed only by the freedom of the markets, thereby paving the way for Western countries abuse of power and exploitation in the Middle East. 7 Qatees, 2009 During the Iraq-Iranian War in the 1980s, many people from both countries were desperate for information about missing relatives. Iraqi television conveyed only half of the story, while its Iranian counterpart showed only the country s victories. To get to know the other half of the story, you had to be able to intercept signals from the neighbouring country and pirate channels. As this was impossible using the officially sanctioned antennas many people set about producing their own illegal versions. After many decades, those illegal antennas were about to be forgotten. This story takes place in Tanjaro, an open-air deposit for scrap metal. Hiwa K asked Abas, a former deserter and antenna builder, to tell him about all the (sometimes) strange shapes he used to make. Hiwa K s sketches of the shapes were used to start remaking them and testing them until they were good enough to receive Iranian TV signals. Two kinds of antennas ended up becoming official antennas and are now being massproduced. Qatees investigates the interference between personal needs and desires, the greater political whole, amateur ingenuity, the power of images, poetry and stories. Abas looks back on his past when had to go into hiding. Hiwa K tries to capture Abas s story. As the different periods and places merge this creates an interval that seems to float on the waves of the ether and Abas memory. The artist decided that the task of turning the raw footage into this video should be left to the collector who bought the work. He therefore not only queries the authorship status of artists, but also evokes the recent history of his country of origin. Rather than undergoing inward development, Iraq s progress was for a long time shaped by external agents and their interests. Hiwa K s open-minded attitude as an artist in this case can also be seen in the light of how displaced people are dependent on external factors. 5

6 8 Pre-Image, Porto, 2014 What you see in a moment of panic is a pre-image. When someone asks Hiwa K where he is based, he often answers by saying: On my feet. His reply to the natural follow-up, And where are your feet based?, is: My feet are never based. Pre-Image documents a performance in Porto, Gdansk and Vienna, among others, and between Greece and Rome along the way. On his nose, Hiwa K balances a bar on which motorbike mirrors are mounted. The DIY navigation instrument reflects the environment in which he is walking. The balancing act and the fragmented image in the mirrors compel the artist to err on the side of caution. The vertical gaze that he uses to move forward horizontally is fragmented, distorted, unreliable. This allows him to re-experience the lack of stability in the midst of his constant state of movement during his migration. The title Pre-Image refers to the difference between how we imagine the places we want to reach, their possibilities before they become images and how they are in reality; the contrast between vertically imagined places and the horizontal reality in which we experience places on the ground. The performance shows Hiwa K s first impressions of the cities he discovers on his escape route. Interpreted as a reconstruction of his migration past, of which he has no photographs, the performance could also be called a post-image. 9 It s Spring and the Weather Is Great, So Let s Close All Object Matters, 2012 This installation was originally developed as part of Chicago Boys: While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming, a project of Hiwa K that has been running since The work was intended as an idea for Speaker s Corner in London, a place where executions were carried out between 1196 and Before the convicted person was hung at the Tyburn Hanging Tree, he or she traditionally was given a last chance to make a public statement. To this day, the place continues to be associated with freedom of expression. The site s two functions speech and hanging involve an upward movement for making something public. Hence the ladder constructions in this installation. Hiwa K produced them for a performance by Chicago Boys, an amateur band, initiated by him, without a permanent line-up that covers music from the 1970s and also acts as a forum for discussing the impact of neoliberalism. The City of London refused to allow the performance to take place on the ladders owing to safety considerations and thus helped to determine the status of the work: a setting for a performance became an installation. The title of the work is a variation of It s Spring and the Weather Is Great, So Let s Close All Subject Matters, a song from the 1970s that became popular as interpreted by the actress Suad Husni. Salah Jahin s lyrics used an intense form of irony to criticise the Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who turned his back on the Soviet Union in favour of America during that period. Sadat therefore launched the radical changes that led to economic liberalism in the region and paved the way for neoliberalism in that area of the world. This theme crept into Hiwa K s work when he was doing research on the wars in Iraq and their link to neoliberal agendas. During the same period, the artist spent some time listening once more to the music he heard when he was a child. The two aspects are reflected in this project, which seeks to facilitate the sharing of personal anecdotes, experiences and insights among the performers who invariably have Middle Eastern roots in the light of circumstances that changed the lives of their families in the 1970s and 1980s. Chosen in a group setting, the songs come from Kurdistan, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Their meaning lies not so much in their lyrics as in their connection with the performers personal stories. 6

7 10 One Room Apartment, 2008 In a recent interview, Hiwa K commented on the shift from we to me in Kurdistan: Before the invasion in 2003, the society was grouporiented. People shared things from rooms to pots even. Now the region copies the Western independence model. Nobody has time for anyone else and the law of consumption reigns supreme. Thinking collectively is a thing of the past. This house is a striking illustration of how new economic models changed the social structure and the rise of individualism and solitary ways of living. The minimalist form is not a reference to minimal art but originated from pragmatism. This photograph was the source material for a sculpture in the form of a concrete house at the documenta14 art exhibition in Athens (2017). 11 View From Above, 2017 View From Above is about the burden of proof imposed on refugees. In order to be granted asylum, they must be able to prove that they have fled from a so-called unsafe area. Refugees are questioned in detail about the cities and surrounding areas they say they come from. The bureaucrats doing the questioning don t know anything about these cities but rely on information they glean from maps. Interviewees who fail to be convincing enough end up having their asylum applications refused. Many of them face difficulties during the procedure. This is often not because they lie about their city of origin but because of the type of the question they are asked. In the video, Hiwa K tells the story of an Iraqi army deserter who was refused asylum because he came from a safe area, according to the UN definition. As he would be risking his life if he had to return, he decided to try his luck elsewhere. Using information gleaned from refugees coming from an unsafe area in Iraq, he drew maps and memorised them completely. Unrelated to actually living in the identified environment, this bird s eye view nonetheless helped him to be granted asylum. Both the interviewer and himself looked at the area from the same vertical perspective. This story constitutes an exceptional case. Thousands of Iraqis who really fled from unsafe areas were unable to sound convincing enough when explaining all they knew about their former homes. Their answers showed their familiarity with these places according to their actual experience of their places of residence in situ, therefore from a horizontal perspective. View From Above points to a poignant relationship between how a certain view can distort the concept of an area with the possible consequence of a fatal policy of exclusion. 12 Diagonal, 2008 In preparation for his performance Moon Calendar (see below), Hiwa K explored the Amna Suraka/Red Security Complex in Sulaymaniyah. During his childhood, the artist lived right next to the land and saw how, in 1980, a former football field was transformed by Saddam Hussein s regime into a complex for imprisoning and torturing political prisoners. On the site, Hiwa K found this ruin of a very battered watchtower, an architectural element that he, as a child, could see from his home, sunk diagonally into the sandy ground, and seized upon the discovery as an opportunity for a critical ad hoc performance. He entered the tower, a remnant of the horror and abuse of power that once took place at this site, and made as if to push himself a bit deeper into the ground. This work could also represent the position that Hiwa K occupies as an artist and man in a world bursting at the seams. The physical tension between his body and the architecture of the tower depicts a search for a balance between vertical and horizontal forces. Is the tower supporting the body or is it the other way around? Or do they both keep each other in balance? 7

8 13 Moon Calendar, 2007 In common with Diagonal (2008), Moon Calendar takes place in Sulaymaniyah, Hiwa K s home town, more specifically in the Amna Suraka/ Red Security Complex, which used to house political prisoners when Saddam Hussein was in power. We see the artist during a rehearsal for a performance. In and around the buildings steeped in this negative history, he tap-dances flamenco-style to the rhythm of his own heartbeat that he follows by listening through a stethoscope. With the increasing intensity of the dance, the speed of the feet and that of the heart lose simultaneity. The artist tries but fails to reconcile them rhythmically. The focus on the rhythm of his heart isolates Hiwa K from the environment, providing him with a private space for personal thoughts. The physical performance of the dance allows him to experience the place separately from its traumatic character and yet still be intensely present on the spot. Through rhythm and movement, the artist seems to want to measure, internalise, the dimensions of the spaces. The sound of his heartbeat makes us experience his cadence more intensely, providing an insight into his inner self to some extent. The obstinately sounding rhythmic patterns of Hiwa K s feet and heart heighten the sense of urgency in relation to theme of this performance. Biography During the second Gulf War in the 1990s, Hiwa K ( 1975, Kurdistan, Iraq) was compelled to flee his country for political reasons. He travelled on foot for more than five months, crossing Iran to reach Turkey, Greece, Italy and France. In 2002 he began studying flamenco music with Paco Peña in Rotterdam. He then went to live in Germany, where he developed his first art projects at the Mainz Academy. 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). In 2016, he received the documenta Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Art Award. In 2017, he had a solo exhibition at KW, Berlin. Following its presentation in the S.M.A.K., the Moon Calendar exhibition will travel to the Kunstverein Hannover, Germany. The title Moon Calendar suggests an alternative understanding of time and its passage, a shift in the perception of the crimes committed in this place. The performance refers to this past, but not explicitly so, creating an opportunity for reflection and new stories as a counterweight. In the video, the sounds of the reconstruction activities at the prison site during that time herald its conversion into the Iraqi National Museum of War Crimes, a memorial and site designed to make people more aware of a dark period in the region s collective memory. 8