Hiwa K: Screening and Conversation with Anton Vidokle

Image: Hiwa K, This Lemon Tastes of Apple (still), 2011. Courtesy of the artist, KOW, Berlin and Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan, Lucca.

Join us at 5pm on Saturday, March 29, 2025 for a special program with Hiwa K, featuring screenings of the artist’s works Pre-Image (Blind As The Mother Tongue) (2017), View From Above (2017), and This Lemon Tastes of Apple (2011). The screenings will be followed by a conversation between Hiwa K and Anton Vidokle.

Through Hiwa K’s inquisitive approaches to performance and collaboration, as well as to the very mediums of sound and moving-image, the works in this program regard the circumstances of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora as tied to exigencies of exile, placehood, and political struggle.

Films

Pre-Image (Blind As The Mother Tongue) (2017, 18 minutes)
As a member of the immigrant generation that illegally journeyed from Iraqi Kurdistan to Europe on foot, Hiwa K’s “Mirror” simulates an experience of walking through foreign territory. Using an “object-sculpture” made of stick and motorbike mirrors which he balances on his nose, Hiwa K finds his way. The object acts as a navigation device and what Hiwa K calls “an adaptation tool” that he uses to familiarize himself with unknown spaces. It is an extension of the organs and senses, providing the traveler (and viewer) with various mirrored perceptions, “seemingly longing to my body rather than belonging to it”, describes Hiwa K.

View From Above (2017, 12 minutes)
In the last four decades, many people have come from Iraq as refugees. In 1991, a division was created between northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and the rest of Iraq. The UN considers Kurdistan a safe zone. As a refugee you have to come from the unsafe zone, or at least prove that you do, in order to qualify as a refugee. During the interview for refugee status, an official checks to see whether you really come from the unsafe zone. He asks about small details of the city you claim to come from, and compares your answers to a map to confirm that your answers correspond to it. If you cannot prove that you come from the unsafe zone, you are sent back to your country. Many people have difficulty proving that they come from the unsafe zone, even if they really come from there.

This Lemon Tastes of Apple (2011, 13 minutes)
“Kurdistan—Northern Iraq was called by Sadam, Allah’s paradise on earth. I started to understand the irony after 1988 when I was told by some of our relatives who survived the chemical attack in Halabja, that the chemicals smelled after apple.” —Hiwa K

The video documents an intervention undertaken by the artist on April 17, 2011 in Sulaimany, during one of the last days of the civil protest that consisted of two months of struggle. The international media never properly covered the protest, which was finally brutally smashed by the armed forces of the local government. The harmonica motif by Ennio Morricone, from the movie Once Upon a Time in the West, is transformed here into a signal of protest, a call to go forth, and a song for the unexpressed. Hiwa K plays harmonica, with Daroon Othman playing the guitar, utilizing megaphones. The day of the performance was the last legal day of demonstration, when the stage from which the activists were addressing the people was burnt. The artist came twice with the protesters from the Sarai Azadi [Freedom Square] towards the frontier, before and after gas attacks. The inhalation of the teargas through the harmonica internalizes again why the protest broke out. The work occurred within the protest, rather than being a work about the protest.

Bios
Hiwa K was born in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq in 1975. His informal studies in his hometown 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 continuously 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 major institutional exhibitions, 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), New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), “Theater of Operations” at MoMA (2019), Jameel Arts Center Dubai (2020), Museum Abteiberg (2021), The Power Plant Toronto (2022), KOW, Berlin (2023),“Echoes of the Brother Countries” at HKW, Berlin (2024), “Politics of Love” at Kunsthaus Hamburg (2024), “Dis-placed” at Konschthal Esch (2024), and Ruya Foundation, Iraq (2024).

Anton Vidokle is an artist and editor of e-flux journal.

For more information, please contact program [​at​] e-flux.com.

Accessibility
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