Ball Ballat Babel, 2023

As a Kurd in an Arab school, Hiwa K understood not a word of the Arabic spoken around him and in fact did not grasp that what he was not understanding was a foreign language he could learn (ball ballat means blah blah). Until one day, when he was six, he suddenly got it, and from then on he spoke Arabic. A bit of background: the Kurdish language has been repressed or marginalized for decades in a variety of ways in the areas in which it is spoken, and some Kurdish children never learn their native tongue. To complicate matters, there is no unified Kurdish language, only widely different dialects, making it difficult to articulate the idea of a united Kurdish nation. The formal design of the collages revisits Hiwa K’s My Father’s Color Periods (2014–), again with an autobiographical reference: when the first color film was broadcast on Iraqi television in 1979, few residents of the Kurdish areas had color TV sets. Hiwa K’s father, a calligrapher, devised a creative solution to the problem. He cut pieces of colored transparent foil and taped them over the black-and-white TV image, transforming the unfulfilled promise of technological progress into an art in its own right.

Hiwa K, Ball ballat Babel 1, 2023, lightbox, inkjet print, color foil, 100 x 70 cm, Photo by Ladislav Zajac

Hiwa K, Ball ballat Babel 2, 2023, lightbox, inkjet print, color foil, 70 x 100 cm, Photo by Ladislav Zajac

Hiwa K, Ball ballat Babel 3, 2023, lightbox, inkjet print, color foil, 100 x 70 cm, Photo by Ladislav Zajac

Hiwa K, Ball ballat Babel 4, 2023, lightbox, inkjet print, color foil, 100 x 70 cm, Photo by Ladislav Zajac

Hiwa K, Ball ballat Babel 5, 2023, lightbox, inkjet print, color foil, 100 x 70 cm, Photo by Ladislav Zajac

Lightbox, inkjet print, color foil
100 x 70 cm
Photos by Ladislav Zajac

INDEX:

Add Tags

Hiwa K

**He Who Stares at the Sky Will Go Blind!, 2018**

**0° Blind Spot, Where Beloved is…, 2017 – 2018**

**Pre-Image (Blind As The Mother Tongue), 2017**

**The Existentialist Scene in Kurdistan (Raw Materiality 01), 2017**

**Tonight This Film Will Be Broadcasted In Color, 2016**

**Nazhad and The Bell Project, 2007–2015**

**It's Spring And The Weather Is Great So Let's Close All Object Matters, 2012**

**What the Barbarians did not do, did the Barberini, 2012**

Biography

Hiwa K was born in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq in 1975. His informal studies in his home town 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 continthuously 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 various 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). A selection of recent solo shows include the New Museum, NYC (2018), S.M.A.K., Ghent (2018), Kunstverein Hannover (2018), Jameel Arts Center Dubai (2020), Museum Abteiberg (2021) and The Power Plant (Toronto (2022). He has recieved several prizes such as in 2016 the Arnold Bode Prize and the Schering Stiftung Art Award and the latest being the Hector Prize in 2019.

Full Biography

Dossiers