“The Light of Expance” – an undefined phenomenon of being, permeating both the visible and invisible spheres of human life. Records of memory, allowing the definition of states of emotional experience, become an expression of the sense of unity in the multilayered world of our earthly endeavors. They draw on the values of European art while giving it their own profound emotional resonance. Unity is multiplicity, multidimensionality of the unknowable, a conscious yearning for shared existence. It is an emotional, sometimes passionate discourse, touching on the inner and outer relations between beings who long for a simple life, free from shattering earthly upheavals. The creativity of Kurdish artists reaches into spaces recognizable to Europeans. It touches upon the world and relationships familiar to us. Yet, in their art, there also appear realms filled with social and individual dramas. They respond with intensity and intellectual engagement to the fate of their community, both past and present. Social inequalities, the marginalization of women, the pushing aside of freedoms—moral, creative, religious, and political—along with disregard for individuality, become the depth of an open space of creative thought. The drama of war, often internal, physical, and spiritual, awakens an elemental sense of artistic integrity, demanding the raising of public awareness through artistic forms that illustrate past and present realities. Their art is like the light of space, dazzling with its power, presenting an image of the world to eyes that do not see its glow. Too often absent from the realms of global art, they tell us about ourselves through their lived experience. Relationships between us—as people, between us and the surrounding world in which we live—are present in the art of many Kurdish creators, who bring to life complex artistic statements.
Kurdish artists are not strangers, not absent, not blind. They are a phenomenon that gives light, like boundless space. To exist within it is to live in complete unity with the surrounding universe.
The exhibition features 25 artists representing several generations of Kurdish art—women and men, both senior and very young—speaking the shared language of art that evokes unique emotions.