Participant: Hiwa K.

Hiwa K.

Visual artist and musician. His major interest circles around the notion of event, performativity, as well as the figure of the artist as an amateur. Since 2005, he has been developing a series of projects involving paradoxes of cultural competence, participation, dissemination of knowledge and distribution of the event.

Born in Iraq, he is currently preparing his diploma in visual arts in the Akademie der Bildende Kunst in Mainz, Germany. He graduated from secondary school in Iraq and continued his education in the self-education circles of his home country with other visual artists, intellectuals, musicians and theatre artists. The major fields of these informal and non-systematic studies were European literature and philosophy, learnt from books translated into Arabic.

In parallel, since 1985, he has practised painting - also in the public space. He abandoned painting around 1998 and started to play flamenco guitar music. For a period of three years he took guitar master classes under Paco Serrano, Anton Jimenez, Oscar Largo and other legendary Spanish flamenco musicians. Since 2002, he has been living in Germany as a political refugee.

In 2005, he decided to get back to visual arts and began studies in Mainz, with a master class in painting under Professor Friedemann Hahn, art theory with Astrid Ihle and critical artistic practice with Aneta Szylak. Since 2006, he has been collaborating with Wyspa Progress Foundation in Gdansk. He was also selected for the never realised Manifesta 6 School in Cyprus.

He speaks six languages: Kurdish, Arabic, Persian, English, Dutch and German.

In 2007-2009, he is co-curating with Aneta Szylak a project entitled “Estrangement”, dealing with cultural translation and dissemination of knowledge between Europe and the Middle East through visual means and the fostering of discourse over cultural competence.

One-person projects:

2007 Moon Calendar, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

Cooking with Mama, webcast event for World Chat 7080 at Wyspa Institute of Art

2006

• Silicone, event, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

• Untitled performance for the IGBK conference "Reality Check: Who is afraid of Master of Arts?”, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

• Cooking with Mama, webcast event, Akademie der Bildende Kunst, Mainz, Germany

• Cooking with Mama, United Nations Plaza, Berlin, Germany

Group exhibitions, projects and participations:

2007

You won’t feel a Thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia, curated by Aneta Szylak, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdansk, Poland

2006/2007

• Participated in The Institute for New Social Research, a project organised by the United Nations Plaza e.V., Berlin, Germany

2006

• You won’t feel a Thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anaesthesia, curated by Aneta Szylak, Kunsthaus Dresden

• Cold 4, Modelarnia/Wyspa Progress Foundation, Gdansk, Poland

Cooking with Mama, 2006
Hiwa K., Eating, video, 2006
Hiwa K., See/Saw, documented performance, 2006
Hiwa K. Country Guitar Lessons, 2005-2007
Hiwa K., Moon Calendar, performance, 2007