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Kunstverein Hannover Sophienstraße 2 D-30159 Hannover T: +49(0)511.16 99 278 -12 F: +49(0)511.16 99 278 -278 [email protected] www.kunstverein-hannover.de

Press Release

Opening: May 25, 2018, 8:00 pm Press Conference: May 23, 2018, 12:30 am


Press Release Hiwa K Moon Calendar May 26–July 29, 2018

Opening: Friday, May 25, 2018, 8:00 pm After the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst, S.M.A.K., in Ghent, the Kunstverein Hannover is the second station of the extensive solo exhibition “Moon Calendar“ of the Kurdish-Iraqi artist Hiwa K. In his videos and installations, the artist (*1975) reflects on collective occurrences and subjective narratives, on temporal-ity in constant reference to history, and not least on flight and migration on the basis of his personal history. “Moon Calendar” is not only the title of one of the works in the exhibition but can also be seen as a culturally different but equivalent form of orientation in and navigation through the world.

In the exhibition’s eponymous video “Moon Calendar” (2007), Hiwa K can be seen dancing in a hall that is part of the Iraqi prison complex Amna Souraka while monitoring his heartbeat with the use of a stethoscope and transferring it, like a transcription, into flamenco dance steps on the floor. Thus with each beat and counter-beat of his heart, a process develops that reminds the artist of his positioning as well as timing within the crucial, context-laden surrounding space. Besides presenting existing installations, all of which incorporate exemplary historical references and links—for instance the video “Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue)” (2017) shown in Athens during docu-menta 14, the new film “Pin Down” (2017) recently realized by de Appel Amsterdam, as well as earlier works such as “For a Few Socks of Marbles” (2012) and the sculptural installation “It's Spring and the Weather Is Great, So Let's Close All Object Matters” (2012), Hiwa K will create two expansive site-specific installations at the Kunstverein Hannover:

The complete arrangement of the sand sculptures “What the Barbarians Did Not Do, Did the Barberini” (first version 2012) will be presented for the first time in five different sizes and spread out monumentally. It makes formal reference to the Pantheon and in terms of content takes up its discourse on the ambivalent character of the material bronze—for the purpose of creating art and manufacturing weapons—and extends it geographically with the projection of videos featuring melted molds coming out of the fire at a foundry at the outskirts of Northern Iraq where war weapons are melted sown and reconfigured for another use.

Hiwa K has participated in 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). Before his exhibition at the S.M.A.K. in Ghent (2018), he had solo exhibitions at de Appel in Amsterdam (2017) and recently at the New Museum in New York (2018). In 2016, Hiwa K received the Schering Stiftung Art Award, which included an exhibition at KW Berlin in 2017, and he also won the Arnold Bode Prize within the context of documenta.


Press Release Contact and Information

Press Contact Olga Isaeva T +49 511.169927812 [email protected] _______________ Opening Hours Tuesday–Saturday 12:00–7:00 pm Sundays and holidays 11:00 am–7:00 pm _______________ Library By appointment _______________ Admission €6.00 / reduced €4.00 / free for members. Guided tours and events are included in the admission and are free for members of the Kunstverein Han-nover. Reduced admission for members of other Kunstvereine (ADKV).


Press Release Hiwa K 1975* in Kurdistan, Irak, lives and works in Berlin

Awards and Grants 2016 Kunstpreis der Schering Stiftung

Arnold Bode-Preis 2015 Kunstfonds to take part at 56th Venice Biennale 2014 Goethe Institute in Amman for Chicago Boys Project 2012 IFA Grant to take part in Alternativa 2012 Residency, MACRO, Rom 2011 IFA Grant to make a presentation of Estrangement Project in Sazmanab 2010 Residency, Serpentine Gallery, London, in the framework of the Project Edg-

ware Road: Center for Possible Studies 2009/2010 Residency, ACC Gallery Weimar 2007 IFA, Study trip to Istanbul to pursue research for Estrangement Project, Platform

Garanti, Istanbul

Solo exhibitions 2018 “Moon Calendar”, Kunstverein Hannover, Hannover “Moon Calendar”, S.M.A.K., Ghent “Blind as the Mother Tongue”, New Museum, New York 2017 “Don't Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet”, KW Institute for Contemporary Art,

Berlin “To remember, sometimes you need different archeological tools” De Appel, Amsterdam

2016 “This Lemon Tastes of Apple”, KOW, Berlin 2015 “Home Works”, Kunsthalle C, Stockholm 2014 “My Father´s Color Periods”, Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan 2012 »For a Few Socks of Marbels«, Laboratorios 987, MUSAC, Festival

Internacional de Las Artes de Castillay, León 2011 “As if it was here long before”, Kunstbuero, Wien 2010 “Chicago Boys: while we were Singing they were Dreaming”, Serpentine

Gallery, London 2009 “Qatees”, Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan 2007 “Cooking with Mama”, Babel lounge at the Babylon exhibition,

Pergamonmuseum, Berlin and United Nations Plaza, Berlin


Press Release Group exhibitions (Selection) 2018 “globalocal”, Kunsthalle zu Kiel

“Field of Codes”, PiK – Projektraum im KunstWerk, Cologne “74 million million million tons”, Sculpture Center, New York “Power to the People”, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main “Finding Home: The Global Refugee Crisis”, UCF Art Gallery, Orlando “These fingers read sideways”, Monomatic – Fettes College, Edinburgh

2017 “NOW”, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh “documenta 14”, Kassel / Athens “Rock the Kasbah”, Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris “Tension & Conflict, Video Art after 2008”, MAAT, Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology, Lissabon “Autumn Season 2017 Exhibition”, Hospitalfield, Arbroath “Learning from documenta”, Museum Cultuur Strombeek, Gent

2016 “Wir Flüchtlinge – Von dem Recht, Rechte zu haben”, Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe “Out of the Dark”, KOW, Berlin

2015 “All the World’s Futures”, 56th Venice Biennale 2014 “Parle Pour Toi”, Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris

“This Lemon Tastes of Apple”, New Museum, NYC 2013 “Flatness”, Oberhausen Film Festival

“Possession”, Khiasma “RENDEZ-VOUS SORTIE DE MON CORPS”, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin “This Lemon Tastes of Apple”, Relevant Music, Villa Elisabeth, Berlin “This Field is to the Sky”, Only Backwards, ISCP Gallery, NYC “This Lemon Tastes of Apple”, Impakt Festival, Utrecht “The Reader”, BAK, Utrecht “Schizophonia”, Synagogue de Delme “Video Screening”, La Gallerie, Paris

2012 “Alternativa 2012 – International Visual Arts Festival”, Gdańsk “What the Barbarians did not do, did the Barberini”, La Triennale, Intense Prox-imity, Paris “Edgware Road Project”, Serpentine Gallery, London “Hayward Touring Exhibition”, Hayward Gallery London

2011 “Chicago Boys, While We Were Singing, They Were Dreaming”, Collaboration with Casco and If I Can’t Dance, I Don't Want To Be Part Of Your Revolution, Utrecht, Enschede, Arnhem, Amsterdam “Studio Dispatches”, Art Dubai “Estrangement Project”, Wyspa Institute of Art, in the framework of Alternativa 2012, Gdańsk “Labor and Leisure”, in the framework of Alternativa 2012, Gdańsk


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2010 “Estrangement Project”, The Showroom, London “Chicago Boys: while we were Singing, they were Dreaming”, Center for “Possible Studies”, Serpentine Gallery, London “Open Eye Award Gala”, KOW, Berlin “Dwelling In Travel”, Art Today Association, Plovdiv “This Story Is Not Ready For Its Footnotes”, X Elettrofonica, Rom

2009 “All that is Solid Melts into Air”, City Visions, Mechelen, organized by MuHKA “The View from Elsewhere”, Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane “Cooking with Mama”, Summer Drafts, Bolzano “The Inescapable Experience of Translation”, Ecole du Magazin, Grenoble “7th Mercosul Biennial”, Porto Alegre

2008 “The Rest of Now”, X-Alumix in Bolzano, Manifesta 7, Fortezza, Bolzano, Trient, Rovereto “Cooking with Mama”, webcast project, Staedelschule, Frankfurt and 18th Street Arts Center, Santa Monica

2007 “Cooking with Mama”, webcast project for Intimacy, Perfmance Festival, Gold-smiths College, University of London “Cooking with Mama”, webcast event, World Chat 7080, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdańsk “You won’t feel a thing: on Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anesthesia”, Wyspa Institute of Art, Gdańsk

2006 “Participation in The Institute for New Social Research”, Project organized by United Nations Plaza e.V., Berlin “You Won’t Feel a Thing: On Panic, Obsession, Rituality and Anesthesia”, Kunsthaus Dresden

Film Festival Participation / Screenings 2018 Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam

Punto de Vista, Pamplona EMAF – European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück Images Festival, Toronto Film Society of Lincoln Center, New York

2017 Propositions for Non-Fascist Living #1: I Care, Utrecht 10th edition of Lo schermo dell’arte Film Festival, Florence Les Rencontres internationales des cinémas arabes, Film festival Les Rencontres d'Aflam, Marseille Videoart at Midnight, Babylon Cinema, Berlin 61st BFI London Film Festival 2017, London

2016 L'Alternativa – 23 Festival de Cinema Independente de Barcelona Artists' Film Biennial, ICA London


Press Release Press images Hiwa K »Moon Calendar« 26.05–29.07.2018 Information and pictures for press purposes are available on http://www.kunstverein-hannover.de/en/press/hiwa-k.html. Please note the particulars about the picture credits, otherwise the images cannot be reproduced for free. Permission must be granted for commercial purposes. We will gladly assist you in these matters.

Hiwa K “Moon Calendar”, 2007, (Film still) SD Video, 4:3, Color, Sound, 12:16

Hiwa K “Pin Down”, 2017 3 channel video installation (34’12’’) Installation view at S.M.A.K., 2018 Commissioned by De Appel, Amsterdam Installation view at Kunstverein Hannover, 2018 Photo: Raimund Zakowski

Hiwa K »It’s Spring and the Weather Is Great, So Let’s Close All Object Matters«, 2012 Mixed media Private Collection / Permanent loan at S.M.A.K, Ghent Installation view at Kunstverein Hannover, 2018 Photo: Raimund Zakowski


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Hiwa K »What the Barbarians Did Not Do, Did the Barberini«, 2012 / 2018 Installation view at Kunstverein Hannover, 2018 Photo: Raimund Zakowski

Hiwa K »Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue)«, 2017, (Film still) Digital video, 16:9, color, sound, 18 min. Coproduced by Open-Vizor, Abbas Nokhesteh

Hiwa K »He Who Stares at the Sky Will Go Blind!«, 2018 Calligraphy: Taha Sali Mixed media Installation view at Kunstverein Hannover, 2018 Photo: Raimund Zakowski

All works: Courtesy of the artist, KOW, Berlin and Prometeogallery di Ida Pisani, Milan / Lucca


Press Release Information about the Exhibition

In his videos and installations, the artist Hiwa K, born in the northern Iraqi region of Kurdistan in 1975, reflects on political events and historico-cultural phenomena, which he joins together in his poetic works. Temporality in a constant reference to history and not least his own flight serve as his matrix or source material. The question concerning geographic situatedness, the search for orientation, or becoming aware of oneself play a fundamental role in many of the works by the artist, who once said that his “homeland” is located in his feet.

The extensive solo exhibition of the documenta participant (2017) at the Kunstverein Hannover developed in collaboration with the Belgian museum S.M.A.K. As is always the case in his ar-tistic practice, Hiwa K draws on existing works, which he recontextualizes and changes for the respective spaces. In Rooms 1 and 7 he uses the prominent windows of the Kunstverein as screens to channel sunlight into the space in different colors, and the monumental work in sand “What the Barbarians Did Not Do, Did the Barberini” (2012/18) spreads out in Room 4 in five versions, for the first time in its entirety.

Rooms 1 and 7

Hiwa K’s use of colored foils as filters can be traced back to the work “My Father’s Color Period” (2013) and the associated story: In the Kurdish region of Iraq in which the artist grew up, the government banned color televisions despite the technical possibilities—as if color posed a threat—and deprived the Kurdish population of “watching in color.” As a kind of silent protest, Hiwa K’s father, who was a calligrapher, stuck colored foils on the television screen and transformed the black-and-white broad-casts into a monochrome surface.

For the site-specific installation “He Who Stares at the Sky Will Go Blind!” (2018), the characteristic windows of the Kunstverein serve as the carrier surface for foils in order to color the sunlight that radi-ates into the space onto the floor in the summer. In the two symmetrical façade spaces, this light work meets with a text written in Kurdish in which the artist tells another story that makes direct reference to the work: Hiwa K describes how in 1991, in the course of the struggles for independence by the Kurd-ish population—during which, among other things, the Amna Suraka prison was charged—he runs into a friend from his childhood days named Ako. He has a vivid memory of the moment when Ako encoun-tered the seated Hiwa K, who was looking up into the sky, and warned him with the words: “He who stares at the sky will go blind.” Shortly after this meeting, a soldier told Hiwa K that Ako had been killed in one of the struggles and asked him to design a poster for his martyr friend.

From the mid-1980s until 1991, the prison complex Amna Suraka mentioned in this story, also known as the Red Security Building (today a museum), in Hiwa K’s birthplace Sulaymaniyah became a sym-bol for oppression, torture, and indescribable atrocities committed against the local Kurdish population by Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party. The history-laden, depressing site appears in this work as a stage and is also a recurring motif in other works by the artist, such as the video “Moon Calendar“ (2007).


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Room 2

Hiwa K carries on a profound discussion with the philosopher and translator Bakir Ali (*1969 in Sulay-maniyah, Iraq, lives in Berlin) in the film “Pin Down” (2017). The initial state of the two dialogue part-ners sitting upright in a combat sport ring gradually changes over into intimate jostling. The philosophi-cal discourses deal with Hiwa K’s previous oeuvre in the form of insight into core issues of his body of work, which questions our neoliberal model of capitalism, throws light on the subject of migration, and makes reference to the question of identity in the “state” of Kurdistan, which is constantly dominated by outside forces, and among its population.

Room 3

Observations are Hiwa K’s basic source material. He uses his body and his biography as material to act, in place of the collective, as a metaphorical protagonist who impressively reveals the present and the references to historical contexts it contains performatively as well as philosophically.

Hiwa K, who was also trained as a flamenco guitarist and visual artists, often reacts to situations as well as to socially and politically complex contexts: When he was invited by the Serpentine Gallery in 2010 to perform a concert with his conceptual band Chicago Boys at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park in London, he produced the work “It’s Spring and the Weather Is Great, So Let’s Close All Object Matters” (2012). Speakers’ Corner is closely linked with idea of free speech, and since 1872 one can express one’s opinion there by generating attention by means of a ladder from an elevated position. However, this custom is not based on a matter of course, as from the 12th century until 1783 execu-tions took place in a section of Hyde Park, often of critics of the regime. Both of the ways this site was and is used draw on the act of elevation for making public announcements, and Hiwa K uses this tradi-tion by arranging seven ladder pedestals equipped with musical instruments and microphones. Be-cause the concert was cancelled, what was originally planned as a performative work became a site-specific installation that now silently dealt with the tension between individual and shared experiences and occurrences.

While the installation consisting of ladders and musical instruments presents a vertical arrangement, the opposite work, “For a Few Socks of Marbles” (2012), is defined by its horizontality. It involves rugs that feature depictions of an Arabic and Kurdish children’s game. The two versions of this game are distinguished by different rules. The Arabic version has few rules and a vertical hand position with which the marbles are shot with a great deal of force. By contrast, the Kurdish version has a confusing number of rules and a horizontal hand position. For the artist, what manifests here is already a basic attitude of the two neighboring cultures between capitalism and democracy, between verticality and horizontality, as schemes that can by all means be read metaphorically.

Room 4

Hiwa K has realized all five variations of the sand work “What the Barbarians Did Not Do, Did the Barberini” (2012) for the first time for the Kunstverein. With this sculptural work he makes reference to the Pantheon by depicting the coffered segments of the famous Roman dome in the sand as negative impressions. Pope Urban VIII (*1958 in Florence as Maffeo Barberini) marks the historical context. He is known for his extravagant construction measures, which involved having the existing bronze girders


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of the Pantheon removed and melted down to produce canons.

The artist confronts this context with a large-scale video projection that shows the local metal dealer Najad from the northern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah. Najad is melting down nothing less than weapons in his workshop that were used in the First and Second Persian Gulf Wars or the Syrian-Arab Spring, and in doing so exposes the geopolitical extent of these events.

Room 5

Hiwa K, a member of the migrant generation of the 1990s that came on foot to Europe illegally from Kurdistan, focuses on walking through foreign land and finding one’s bearings in unfamiliar surround-ings as well as his on own biography in the narrative of the video “Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue)” (2017). A pole onto which bicycle, car, and motorcycle mirrors have been mounted and which he balances on the bridge of his nose and forehead serves as a navigational device. The mirrors are used as an extension of the sensory organs—on the one hand in order to take a look at the foreign surroundings, and on the other as a reflection of himself, which, however, always remains fragmentary. These “pre-images,” which originate as concepts before the development of the actual image, are pieces in a puzzle, so to speak, that make reference to a future without any kind of security whatso-ever, because the pacing man can look neither ahead nor behind.

Room 6

Hiwa K already documented the suppression of the Iraqi Spring, which received little coverage in inter-national media, in other works that have been presented numerous times. Shortly after the protest in Sulaymaniyah, that same year Hiwa K and a local activist group organized an artistic intervention, “Do You Remember What You Are Burning?” (2011). The film shows young Kurdish people at the main square of the city of Sulaymaniyah, where the public revolt had recently been violently defeated, burn-ing books page by page. The text is destroyed due to exposure to rays of sun falling onto the individual letters through a magnifying glass. The process takes place slowly, carefully, and almost meditatively, as if one is to be once more reminded of a narrative relationship between the physical body of the book and the people who are present.

Finally, in the exhibition’s eponymous video “Moon Calendar” (2007), Hiwa K can be seen dancing in a hall that is part of the Iraqi prison complex Amna Suraka while monitoring his heartbeat with the use of a stethoscope and transferring it, like a transcription, into flamenco dance steps on the floor. Thus with each beat and counter-beat of his heart, a process develops that reminds the artist of his position-ing as well as his timing within this context-laden surrounding space, which is already addressed in the front spaces of the Kunstverein. However, the artist’s actual intention is to synchronize the heartbeat in his chest with the performance taking place outside with the use of the stethoscope. Both viewers of the video as well as the artist, whose trance-like concentration permits constant failure and who makes it the subject of his work, are aware of the impossibility of this undertaking.


Press Release Exhibitions 2018 Kunstverein Hannover _______________ Alexander Lieck Mein Europa 24.02.–06.05.2018 _______________ Hiwa K Moon Calendar 26.05.–29.07.2018 _______________ 88. Herbstausstellung 18.08.–28.10.2018

_______________ Slavs and Tatars 17.11.2018–27.01.2019 _______________

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