Kurdish artist: Kurdistan Region must have lobbies for distinguished arts

Art and Literature 03:39 PM - 2021-10-12

Artist Dilshad Questani at the Amna Suraka museum of Slemani, Photo Credit: Julia Zimmermman

Renowned Kurdish artist Dilshad Questani calls to open art lobbies in the Kurdistan Region museums to display distinguished arts of Kurdish artists for foreigners to know more about the Kurdish culture.

"Kurdish arts will develop by opening good museums to have the veteran artists and good quality works in the front lines of those museums," Questani told PUKmedia.

"The Culture ministry must buy those works to display them at the museum so that our arts are known as the rest of the countries," he added.

Astist Dilshad Questani, Photo Credit: Julia Zimmermman

The ‘smell of land’ is Questani's most recent exhibition which was held at Slemani's Amna Suraka Gallery during the last two weeks of September. 

The 'Mam and Zin' painting, Photo Credit: Julia Zimmermman

His signature painting at the exhibition was the 'Mam w Zin' painting which according to him represents the famous Kurdish épopée Mam and Zin, as well as the Ahura Mazda which is the highest spirit worshipped in Zoroastrianism.

The French Kurdish artist Dilshad Questani is born in 1957 in Kirkuk, Iraq. When he was around 4 years old the Iraqi government expelled his family and burnt their house, so they had to leave. 

They found refuge in Slemani, where he grew up culturally and artistically. Surrounded by art and literature lovers as relatives he was inspired early to live his talents. He also wrote and published poems and recorded songs for Kurdsat TV and Gali Kurdistan TV.

Due to his background story, Dilshad was opposed to Saddam Hussein and became a peshmerga fighting up in the mountains to liberate his country.

In 1994, he had to make the difficult choice to go into exile and leave his beloved homeland. His path led him to Germany through Iran, Turkey, Greece... then to the country of the famous French painters Monet and Renoir, whom he had admired so much for years; it was his ultimate destination. As a political refugee, he obtained French citizenship in 2010 and lives today in Chaumont, France where his creations come to life.

He started painting when he was 16 years old, without showing his creations at first. In Kurdistan, selling a piece of art was considered shameful: art is a part of life and needs to be shared. Only when Dilshad was in his thirties, he did dare to show his paintings, but when he arrived in France, he decided to dedicate his life to painting. 

Nowadays he is an internationally recognized painter, he has exhibited his paintings in more than 18 countries including France, Great Britain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Japan, Korea or Jordan, and in 2017 in Kurdistan to be acknowledged in his home country, which means a lot to him. 

Reported by Julia Zimmermman, Edited by Hiran
PUKmedia