April 20: 'My City hurts me, and I am hurting my City' an exhibition with a.o. Avan Omar (DAI, 2017) is opening in Kurdistan/Iraq
Avan Omar sends us this text:
"My City hurts me, and I am hurting my City.
This sentence as the beginning of the project was followed by long discussions and debates which gathered and created many artworks. As part of a collection, each of these works tackles differently on the complexities individuals have with their environment and their city.
The exhibition site, the English Hospital, is the first hospital in the Sulaymaniyah city opened during the British colonial times. Some of the works focus on how a city as an object hurts us everyday. A city with its sharp edges tears our clothes, injures our body. With noise, architectural structures, cars, new buildings, roads and many other parts of our modern environment, a city claims our body vulnerable. The failure of architecture, bad planning, bad use of materials doubles the dangers of living in a modern environment which already leans on everyone's lives heavily. Some other works deal with how the city hurts us; Ideology, language, stereotypes, norms, censorship, individuals, organizations, and authorities force us to regulate our behaviours towards a neutralisation causing anxious, psychotic pressures leading to unexpected reactions from individuals."
My City hurts me, and I am hurting my City can be seen at the English Hospital in Sulaymaniyah city in Kurdistan/Iraq from April 20, 2017, onward.