Festival Artist Shwan Dler Qaradaki re-imagines himself as a prime minister who has a background as a refugee. With a mural installation, photography and film this year´s Festival Exhibition explores the border land between art and politics.
The Festival Exhibition 2016 ”Qaradaki as Prime Minister” sets its focus upon the difference between living under a dictatorship and in a democracy. The prize winning Kurdish artist Shwan Dler Qaradaki places the media´s photography of war in an artistic context. How do we react to this daily feed of pictures of state leaders, who make statements and decisions on behalf of the rest of us?
This solo exhibition touches upon strong themes of freedom of expression, identity, belonging, asylum issues and not least art as a means of potential change. As a whole the exhibition creates a playful, humorous and ironic tone. Qaradaki makes use of several techniques and elements in the exhibition which consist of mural installation, photography and video. This will be a one-off opportunity in the festival town of Harstad, in which the artist will express himself directly on the walls of the local Galleri Nordnorge.
The documentary video ”Butterfly Hotel” takes as its starting point four political refugees who look back and are confronted by memories of their flight to Norway from Kurdistan several decades later. The title ”Butterfly Hotel” is the name the refugees gave to a park in Athens where they slept in cardboard boxes. They relate powerful memories of the flight route to their new homeland of Norway, which then forced them to wait for 12 years for a residency permit.
Last Autumn Shwan Dler Qaradaki won the Newcomer of the Year prize from the Norwegian Arts Council on account of his powerful stories told through the medium of solid artistic expression. In 2014 he was also awarded the Oslo Council´s Art Prize. He is known in particular for his triptych of films the «Salt Kiss» which take their starting point from his own flight from Iraqi Kurdistan to Iran after Saddam Hussein launched an attack. During recent years he has enjoyed a series of solo and group exhibitions both at home and abroad. Qaradaki´s work has been acquired by various public institutions, among others the Oslo Council, Buskerud County Council and Fundacion Pablo Atchugarry.
Shwan studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Northern Iraq and completed his arts education in Norway at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2009. Qaradaki was born in 1977 in Sulaimani, which is the Iraqi region of Kurdistan.