Hiwa K’s work often begins from vernacular histories or anecdotal stories told by family members and friends, and is marked by antipathy towards the commoditization of art in a globalized system and the concomitant professionalization of the artist (and other social functions). His practice emphasizes the collective and participatory, and takes its prompts from everyday experience rather than doctrine.
When the artist felt a pain in his lower back—“sharp, deep, ancient”—he went to the hospital for a scan and was told that he had a kidney stone that only invasive surgery could remove. Preferring to avoid, if possible, the transactional nature of the contemporary medical industries, he went to visit a local traditional healer. What happened would call into question the marginalization of Indigenous forms of knowledge and healthcare by the corporate interests of Western medicine, which “arrived into Kurdistan after the war, like an invasion.”
