About this Event
About the exhibition:
‘Endless Tears in the Garden of Eden’ is an exhibition that explores Rushdi Anwar’s personal experiences, reflections, and memories as an indigenous member of Kurdistan-Iraq.
Three key subjects are central to this solo show. Firstly, the Sykes-Picot Agreement of 1916, a colonial document designed by Britain and France that senselessly divided this ‘Middle East’ into a continuing oil-fuelled chaos. Secondly, the human agents that History debates and recalls as the champions of Kurdish culture and its sovereignty, such as Hoshyar Byawelaiy, a Kurd committed to the single-handed demining of Kurdish land today. Thirdly, the mimicry of colonial methodologies of terror– from British poster propaganda to Saddam Hussein’s chemical attacks to ISIS brutality–a landscape, both human and non-human, suffering mass displacement and destruction that continues to be ravaged by proxy wars and religious extremism today.
The sculptures, installations, sounds, and moving images in this exhibition investigate these occurrences, embracing such materials as hand-woven rugs, photographs and historical texts, hand-touched prints, filmic documentary, historical radio propaganda, and more.
The biblical ‘Garden of Eden’ continues to be mired in the deceit of humanity, for this paradise is claimed to begin in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers basin of ancient Mesopotamia, in what today is understood as covering much of Kurdistan.
‘Endless Tears in the Garden of Eden’ is the artist’s first solo show in London, UK, at Ab-Anbar Gallery.
About the speakers:
Alessio Antoniolli (b. 1970) is the director of the Triangle Network, a world-wide network of visual art organisations that work together to create artists and curator's exchanges, to share knowledge with each other. He is also the curator at Fondazione Memmo, Italy, where he programmes an exhibition each year. He regularly lectures on art and has been part of many juries including the UK’s Turner Prize in 2019. Prior to this he was director of Gasworks, London.
Rushdi Anwar (b. 1971, Halabja, Kurdistan-Iraq) lives and works between Thailand, Australia, and Kurdistan-Iraq. His work reflects on the socio-political issues that continue to mire the geopolitics of West Asia, historically known as ‘The Middle East’. Drawing on his personal experiences of displacement, conflict, and trauma endured under Iraq’s colonial and ideological regimes, Rushdi’s art references and generates discourse concerning the status of social equity—exploring its political, social, and religious complexity via study of form and its materiality. Embracing installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and video, his practice recalls the everyday plight of the thousands displaced currently suffering discrimination and persecution, questioning the possibility of redemption and collective necessity to attend with empathy as a social imperative.
Rushdi earned his Ph.D. in Art from RMIT University, Melbourne, and is currently a senior lecturer in the Painting Division of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University, Thailand. He was shortlisted for the Artes Mundi 10-Biennial Prize in Cardiff, 2023, and has exhibited his work with significant institutions worldwide, including The Jim Thompson Art Center in Bangkok, 2023-24; Museum Van Loon in Amsterdam, 2024; the Sharjah Biennial in UAE, 2023; Australian War Memorial across Australia, 2022-24; Heide Museum of Modern Art in Melbourne, 2022; Esta Gallery at The Culture Factory in Sulaymaniyah, 2022; Ocean Flower Island Museum in Danzhou, 2021; the Bangkok Art Biennale, 2020; the 13th Havana Biennial in Cuba, 2019; Art Gallery of NSW during the New Australian Art Biennale in Sydney, 2019; and the 12th Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, 2018. His works have been acquired by public collections worldwide, such as the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE; Australian War Memorial, Canberra; the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Ministry of Arts & Culture; the Da Nang Fine Arts Museum, Vietnam, and has additional pieces in private collections in Kurdistan and Australia.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Ab-Anbar Gallery, 34 Mortimer Street, London, United Kingdom
GBP 0.00