Kî me Ez? - Who Am I?
/UPCOMING EVENTS
Kî me Ez? - Who Am I?
Contemporary Kurdish Art in Diaspora
September 5 - October 25, 2025
Mason Exhibitions Arlington
The Kurdish experience is often marked by oppressive measures like militarized displacement, linguicide, genocide, gender-based violence, imprisonment by the state for cultural and artistic expression, and exiled artists, writers, and activists. Kurdish identity is built upon the rubble, yes, but also within abundance, too. Within this kaleidoscopic reality, Kî me Ez asks our Kurdish artists to take on this existential question: Who Am I?
The collection’s theme grows out of the poem “Kî me Ez” by Cegerxwin, which contemplates Kurdish identity. Moving beyond stereotypical ideas and monolithic understandings, Kî me Ez seeks to offer a depiction of the multifaceted experiences and narratives that exemplify Kurdish existence.
Kurdê serf iraz
Dijminê dijmin
Dostê haştîxwaz
Ez xweş mirov im
Ne hirç û hov im
Lê çibkim bê şer
Dijmm naçî der
Bav û kalê mm
Dijîn tev serbest
Naxwazim. bijîm
Te ebed bindest
Kîme ez?
I am a proud Kurd
Enemy to the enemy
A friend to the peace seekers.
I am a noble person
Not a savage as they claim.
The occupier is not leaving my land without a fight.
My ancestors lived here freely.
I don't want to live forever oppressed.
who am I?
Where traditional heritage and modern expression converge, this exhibition showcases the work of contemporary Kurdish artists in the diaspora. Echoes of colonization, genocide, and intentional fragmentation run through the pieces in this show. Yet, central to Kurdish experience, there is also a focus on beauty, innovation, and reclamation.
As diverse is the Kurdish experience, the artists in this show work through various mediums, including painting, sculpture, photography, and multimedia installations. Within a historical and current-day context of statelessness, migration, and cultural survival, the artists explore themes of displacement, resilience, memory, culture, hope, and the self. This exhibition aims to foster a deeper understanding and appreciation of Kurdish culture and its ongoing dialogue with the world while offering insights into the complex political and cultural landscapes that Kurdish people navigate globally.
Kurdish culture encompasses a wide array of religions, languages, and ethnicities indigenous to the Zagros and Taurus Mountain regions and ancient Mesopotamia. This diversity reflects the rich history and traditions found across the four regions. Ultimately, Kurdistan was divided into four regions by Western empire following World War I: Northern Kurdistan (Bakur) touching Turkey, Southern Kurdistan (Bashur) touching Iraq, Eastern Kurdistan (Rojelat) touching Iran, and Western Kurdistan (Rojava) touching Syria. The Kurds in each region face their own unique sets of experiences but with unifying histories, practices, and kinships across them all. We see this dynamic reflected in the exhibition.
INSTALLATION VIEWS
PARTICIPATING ARTISTS
Pedram Baldari’s “The Heart of a Mountain” echoes the common Kurdish phrase, “No Friends But the Mountains,” and invites us into a world of poetic contemplations about the land and the self and the relationship between the two. Baldari’s traditional patterned mirrorwork offers a contrast to the mountainous landscape, where there’s possibility in duality. His “Walling talks—Talking Walls” whisper sonically and visually, playing the lullabies of Kurdish mothers behind the imagery of the şiler, an emblematic Kurdish flower. Baldari’s work offers a multi-media, multi-sensory feast.
Sener Ozmen’s “Women Jumping Rope” and “All Names” offer seemingly simple delights that speak beyond the frame. The way that the sound overlays the image, the way that the dust kicks up around the women jumping rope (the close up on her smile, her braided hair in the wind), the way the paper boat drifts on the water… we are transported into Kurdish cartographies both internal and external. Ozmen’s evocative photographs “The Flag” and “Supermuslim” provide moments of both levity and bold invocations. Again, here, we are asked to consider what is beyond the image?
Sahar Tarighi’s multi-material sculpture evokes the famous Kurdish mythology of the Shamaran, a half-snake, half-woman figure, embodying knowledge, healing, and resistance. This work speaks to the innate power Kurdish women embody and situates the work within its rightful context in Kurdish history (as it has been co-opted and appropriated by others groups in the region). In Tarighi’s “Shamaran” we encounter yet another variation or translation of this story, including imagery associated with Kurdish women, like the long, dark braids and deq, a traditional Kurdish tattoo practice (once made from breastmilk and ash). Tarighi’s work “Eternal Bloom of Şiler” continues to offer representations of emblematic Kurdish women’s symbolism through the flower associated with both sorrow and rebirth. Additionally, this flower echoes the Kolbars simultaneous strength and vulnerability. It’s impossible to look at Tarighi’s work at large and not think of Jîna (Mahsa) Amini and the way her murder sparked a revolution.
Beizar Aradini’s newest tapestries hanging in the gallery showcase innovation and tradition. The works bring us into the removal of memory and people after the Anfal genocide Additionally, Aradini’s “Giving and Taking” rewards close attention. The way that this thread and tulle piece conveys movement is captivating. The piece displays a mesmerizing vulnerability that encourages the audience to take their time with the work. It’s compelling to realize the way that hair imagery is stitched throughout the exhibition.
Huner Emin humanizes Yazidi genocide survivors in a video transcript of conversations with Yazidis in “Testimonies from Mount Sinjar” . When images may leave us after impact, the written accounts from survivors are meant to pierce the heart and remain with us long after consumption. Emin’s series “Manufactured Democracy” offers a metaphorical spotlight on invasive injustices and local malpractice through a series of lightboxes containing the names of Iraqi individuals who were killed in various civil wars since 2003. Emin uses Arabic calligraphy to write the names provided from the non-profit organization Iraqi Body Count. The accumulation of names across the boxes builds a visual illusion depending on the vantage point of the viewer.
Nuveen Barwari defies expectations in her floor-length fabric collages. A human becomes fabric; the fabric becomes human. Thework, the teacher offer expansive color pallets and textures. Recognizable Kurdish patterns and prints sit next to popular diasporic/ Western imagery. The collage calls to the surface at once a nostalgia and a looking forward. What is absent or removed or erased speaks as loudly as what is present. The Kurdish diasporic body is noticeably represented in this work in exciting ways.
This dynamic exhibition invites you to explore this question in relation to who the Kurds are but also to reflect yourself, turning inward, “Who Am I?”
Artist Biographies
Pedram Badari
Born in the city of Sine (Sanandaj) Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan), Pedram is an interdisciplinary artist, scholar, and architect, working in installation, site-specific, performance art, social practice, and sculpture. Pedram is based in the Detroit Metro Area, Michigan. He has been featured in numerous national and international solo and group art exhibitions since 2010, such as Victoria and Albert Museum London 2012, Documenta 13th Video Import-Export program, Video Nomad Tokyo 2015, Art Basel Basel Switzerland 2014, Freiburg Museum for New Art, Germany 2016, Walker Art Center Minneapolis MN, 2019, Weisman Museum Minneapolis 2019, Soo Visual Art Center 2021, Ashville Center for Craft, Ashville, NC, 2022, BBA International Winner Prize exhibition at Berlin Contemporary, Germany 2023.
He has been selected to artist residencies and fellowships internationally and has been featured in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, Turkey, and The U.S. He is the recipient of the 2012 Magic of Persia and Delfina Foundation Award, Jerome Fellowship Commission for Franconia Sculpture Park 2017, Vermont Studio Center Award 2015-2020, StarDust Fund for his fellowship and art residency at Weisman Art Museum, he is the recipient of National Endowment For the Art Fellowship at MacDowell 2021, Lukcis Scholars Joint Research Awardee 2022, and BBA International Artist Prize Berlin Germany Second Award winner 2023. Baldari has worked as an Assistant Professor in Studio Art at the University of Minnesota 2018-2020, University of North Texas, Denton, TX, College of Visual Art and Design 2020-2023, and currently is an Assistant Professor of Art and Design at Penny W. Stamps School Art and Design, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Pedram’s most recent projects are collaborative and site-specific, such as His most recent Land Art Project in Hawraman Takht Kurdistan, The Heart of a Mountain.
“An intermedia exploration of the themes of land through the indigenous-native-stateless lens versus citizenship-state-property, modes of colonialism, displacement-immigration, and conflict serve as the main method in my work. In short, the intersectionality of power dynamics and systems of legitimacy in and out of the arts form a perspective through which I locate my work in today’s contemporary art practice. Decades of Kurdish ethnic cleansing, a decade of war (Iran-Iraq) taking place in my homeland Kurdistan, and the systemic oppression of my people through linguicide, land grabbing, poverty, forced migration, and ecocide of our native lands by the Iranian regime tie my narrative to that of the natives of North America and other stateless nations across the globe. This functions as the cradle of my art-making processes, investigating different layers of the Anthropocene and the available possibilities of acts of healing for both human and nonhuman through art.”
https://www.pedrambaldari.com/bio
Sener Ozmen
Sener Ozmen born in 1971, Hezex, / Şirnex (Kurdistan), is a new media artist, writer, editor and translator living in Wilmette, Illinois, US. He was an both actor of dissident contemporary art practices that developed in Istanbul after the 1990s, and in Diyarbakir in 2000s, the city where he lived and produced, and he was one of the art writers who wrote this development through period exhibitions and artists (especially Kurdish artists). His articles on Kurdish identity, nationalism, militarism, sexism, production of art and literature in war and conflict zones, migration and post-migration trauma problems in his unique language have been published in art magazines and newspapers, and he has published two books on these subjects, as well as catalog texts. Ozmen's short films and video works have been shown in the world's most respected contemporary art museums and group exhibitions. In 2016, he was a judge at the Love & Change Film Competition at if Istanbul (If Istanbul International Independent Film Festival) together with documentary director and screenwriter Adam Curtis (UK) and documentary producer Philippa Kowarsky (Israel). Ozmen won the Prix Meuly (Hoch Hinaus, Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland) in 2005 and curated many exhibitions and performed solo exhibitions.
He participated in art and writing scholarships of Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa Abteilung Kultur in 2018-2019 (Berlin, Germany), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, EFA Studio Program (NY, USA) in 2017 2018, ISCP (International Studio & Curatorial Program) in 2017, Artist Protection Fund Fellow (NY, USA), Institute of International Education-Artist Protection Fund, Montclair State University Art and Design Department, (New Jersey, USA) in 2017-2018, Q21 Museum Quartier Artist in Residency (Vienna, Austria) in 2016, Der nahe Blick / The Close View in 2008: Turkish-German City Writers Project 2008, Goethe Institut Istanbul, Literaturhaus München, Arte (München, Germany) and 2005 Transfer Turkey- NRW, Exchange and exhibition of artists from Turkey and North Rhine-Westphalia (Muenster, Germany). Ozmen's novels and stories written in the Kurmanji dialectic of Kurdish, an endangered language, were highly appreciated by Kurdish readers. He is one of the authors and participating artists of the Luciano Benetton Collection’s Imago Mundi project called In-Between Worlds Kurdish Contemporary Artist catalog, which was published in 4 languages as part of the Imago Mundi project. Ozmen participated in the contemporary art exhibition that featured Kurdish artists titled “Bêwelat-Unexpected Storytellers, (2021)” at nGbK (neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst, Berlin).
https://senerozmen.com/about
Sahar Tarighi
Sahar Tarighi was born in Shno (Oshnavieh), Rojhelat (Eastern Kurdistan). She earned her Associate’s Degree in Visual Arts, BA in Crafts, and MA in Painting in Tehran, followed by an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Delaware. An interdisciplinary artist, Sahar’s practice spans ceramics, sculpture, video, installation, and social practice. Her work is deeply influenced by the collective memory and experiences of her people, particularly highlighting the resilience of Kurdish women in the face of displacement, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. By drawing from traditional craft and cultural narratives, she integrates Kurdish myths and motifs into her art, creating a space to navigate her existence. Her work reflects her personal journey and embodies the Kurdish slogan 'Berxwedan Jiyane', meaning 'Resistance is Life'.
Sahar’s art has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions globally. She is currently a Post- MFA scholar at Ohio State University.
https://www.sahartarighi.com/bio
Beizar Aradini
Beizar Aradini (b.1991) was born in Mardin, Kurdistan and immigrated with her family to Nashville, Tennessee in 1992. Her work unravels her family’s story as immigrants and examines cultural displacement through craft and fiber arts. Aradini has been featured in many exhibitions nationally and in Bê Welat: The Unexpected Storytellers at nGbk Gallery in Berlin, Germany. Her artwork has also been exhibited at the Frist Art Museum as part of the We Count: First-Time Voters exhibition which received an Award of Excellence by the Tennessee Association of Museums. Her work has been featured in local publications such as Four Women Artists Reflect on Peoples and Places in the Nashville Scene and The Ties That Binds in Native Magazine. In 2021, She was awarded Best in Show in Best of Tennessee Craft 2021 Biennial at the Tennessee State Museum.
She was recently selected as an artist in residency at Arquetopia International Artist Residency and completed an Andean Textile and Weaving workshop during her month-long stay in Urubamba, Peru, an opportunity that was funded in part by a scholarship from Tennessee Craft. She is currently studying in a Masters course at School of the Arts Institute Chicago in fiber and textiles
https://www.beizararadini.com/biocontact.html
Huner Emin
Huner Emin is a stateless multimedia Kurdish artist based in Bloomington, Indiana. Originally from south Kurdistan/northern Iraq, his work has been exhibited internationally, including at the CICA Museum of Art in South Korea, Agora Gallery in NYC, and Duhok Gallery of Art in Kurdistan/Iraq. Emin has received numerous awards, including the Dehaan Artist of Distinction Award, DC Art Commission fellowship, and Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant.
Emin studied Western classical art in Erbil, Iraq, and earned an MFA in Studio Art, Painting from Marywood University in the United States. Since leaving Iraq in 2013 due to political and social issues, he has not returned. During the Arab Spring, his performance piece "Geruk," which questioned governmental power and political dogma, led to his arrest twice between 2011 and 2013. In 2017, he created "Blood Washing," addressing honor killings, first exhibited at the Maslow Study Gallery for Contemporary Art at Marywood University.
Emin’s work continues to reflect his lived experiences and broader concerns in the Middle East, exploring themes such as the Anfal genocide ("180,000 Seconds"), Iraq War atrocities ("Manufactured Democracy") 2021-2024, and ISIL crimes ("Testimonies from Mount Sinjar") ongoing.
Artist Statement: I am an activist and storyteller who uses calligraphy and visual symbols to shed light on various subjects such as honor killings, genocide, and crimes against humanity. My work aims to depict the political and socio-economic realities of my surroundings. I engage in research and multi-disciplinary art projects to express social and political issues, a practice I refer to as Investigative Art. This term reflects my interest in the intersectionality of journalism and art, believing that art can serve as a tool to resist tyranny and expose modern life's atrocities.
My art practice involves collecting data and reorganizing shapes and materials to create pieces in various media styles, including video art, installations, and paintings. I bridge different art-making philosophies by reflecting on Middle Eastern and Western cultures. While studying Western classical art in Iraq, I learned to create art resembling Western culture's horizontal perspective and visual aesthetics. During my MFA studies in the United States, I focused on subject matters reflecting my country of origin's politics. In the West, I sought authenticity in my work, establishing a system influenced by Middle Eastern culture's verticality and poetic nature. As a result, my art is a blend of experiences from two distinct cultures.
I was born and raised in Iraq. After leaving Iraq in 2013, I never returned due to political and social issues with the government. My work since has continued to comment both on my lived experiences and broader concerns in the Middle East, including my own experience of honor killing traditions in the art project Blood Washing created in 2017; 180,000 Seconds art project made in 2016 where I stood for 50 hours for the victims of Anfal genocide campaign 1987-1989 committed by Baath's regime in Iraq against Kurdish minorities; and crimes against humanities and aftermath of Iraq War atrocities in my art project Manufactured Democracy created in 2021-2024. I collected names of Iraqi individuals who lost their lives in the civil wars and wrote the names in the shape of fingerprints to evoke crime scenes.
https://www.huneremin.com/about.html
Nuveen Barwari
Nuveen Barwari was born in Nashville, TN and grew up in Duhok, Kurdistan. She received her MFA from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in 2022 and her B.S in Art from Tennessee State University in 2019. Barwari has shown at Zg Gallery (IL), NGBK Gallery in Berlin, Germany, Duhok Gallery, in Duhok, Kurdistan, Ortega y Gasset Projects (NY), Vanderbilt Fine Arts Gallery (TN), and Art Toronto Canada’s Art fair. Barwari was the 2023 fellow in the Skidmore Art’s Department’s Workspace Residency Program. Her work has been featured in the Nashville Scene, New American Painting, Yahoo Nachrichten Deutschland, Gazete Duvar, and Botan Times. Barwari currently resides in Albany, NY.
Artist Statement: Through the collection and repurposing of artifacts from my community—such as worn Kurdish clothes, fabrics, and used rugs—I explore the inherited histories and cultural meanings embedded within these materials. Textiles in my work serve as tools of resistance, embodying the fluidity and adaptability of language. Rather than focusing on what is lost in translation, I rummage into the shapes and symbols that emerge from living between clashing cultures, languages, and materials. My practice draws deeply on Kurdish poetry, particularly the dual interpretations found in its floral motifs—political and romantic—connecting ideas of place, body, and identity. These poems often weave fragmented and imagined landscapes as acts of resistance and survival. In a similar way, I construct new worlds in my work by piecing together architectural fragments, shapes, and textiles. Through a combination of collage, painting, textiles, and installation, I investigate the intricacies of assimilation, material culture, and the contradictions of diasporic identities. My work often moves between the decorative and the interrogative, as I unravel cultural symbols, redraw borders, and reimagine the space between homeland and host land.
https://nuveenbarwari.com/info
PARTNERS AND COLLABORATORS
Kurdish Student Organization
Holly Mason-Badra
EXHIBITION BOOKSHELF
Titles recommended by the exhibition’s curators and George Mason University Libraries. Click each cover for more details.
EVENT RECORDINGS
Online Artist Talk on Thursday, September 11, 5-8pm: