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| Jamal Penjweny: rose-tinted dreams from Iraq | |
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| Jamal Penjweny is a shepherd turned artist who represented Iraq at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and whose work has appeared in the New York Times and National Geographic. Born in 1981, in a village in present-day Kurdistan, he now lives in Sulaymaniyah on the Iraq-Iran border, where he is working hard to establish the Juniper Art House, a gallery he hopes will one day be the home of a residency programme: “It would help the local community to reconnect with its own history and culture, but we would also like to bring artists from across the world to Iraq. Sulaymaniyah is a friendly and creative city that is generally hugely welcoming to western visitors.” | Jamal Penjweny is a shepherd turned artist who represented Iraq at the 2013 Venice Biennale, and whose work has appeared in the New York Times and National Geographic. Born in 1981, in a village in present-day Kurdistan, he now lives in Sulaymaniyah on the Iraq-Iran border, where he is working hard to establish the Juniper Art House, a gallery he hopes will one day be the home of a residency programme: “It would help the local community to reconnect with its own history and culture, but we would also like to bring artists from across the world to Iraq. Sulaymaniyah is a friendly and creative city that is generally hugely welcoming to western visitors.” |
| Best known for his series of photographs Saddam Is Here (2009-10), Penjweny’s new project is Pink Dream. “These are black-and-white photographs on to which I have scribbled bright and rosy drawings,” he says. “The original images speak of sadness and loss, but my additions elevate them, telling the viewer to read instead a message of hope.” He chose to make his embellishments pink because “when I thought of a colour to represent peace and happiness, I could see only one – and that was pink”. | Best known for his series of photographs Saddam Is Here (2009-10), Penjweny’s new project is Pink Dream. “These are black-and-white photographs on to which I have scribbled bright and rosy drawings,” he says. “The original images speak of sadness and loss, but my additions elevate them, telling the viewer to read instead a message of hope.” He chose to make his embellishments pink because “when I thought of a colour to represent peace and happiness, I could see only one – and that was pink”. |
| The photographs were taken at different times and in different places all over Iraq. “These are ordinary people living in the midst of war: in Amarah, Baghdad, Basra and Kurdistan. When I meet people, I talk to them: I want to interpret their dreams, dreams they don’t even dare to express sometimes. When you have hope, what seems impossible becomes possible. It’s about believing in that which you cannot see with your eyes. When I was a little boy, working as a shepherd in Kurdistan’s mountains, no one believed I would ever reach places like London and America. But I did. My dreams brought me there.” | The photographs were taken at different times and in different places all over Iraq. “These are ordinary people living in the midst of war: in Amarah, Baghdad, Basra and Kurdistan. When I meet people, I talk to them: I want to interpret their dreams, dreams they don’t even dare to express sometimes. When you have hope, what seems impossible becomes possible. It’s about believing in that which you cannot see with your eyes. When I was a little boy, working as a shepherd in Kurdistan’s mountains, no one believed I would ever reach places like London and America. But I did. My dreams brought me there.” |
| Penjweny works in straitened circumstances, with minimal modern equipment (camera, paper, chalk, pencil, mobile phone); a computer (for editing) is a recent addition to the weapons in his armoury. But this makes no difference to the power of his work, so beautiful and so resonant. As our critic Laura Cumming wrote, reviewing an exhibition of his photographs at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in 2014: “His work has great breadth, depth and empathy… What would he make with more advanced technology? The question becomes irrelevant.” | Penjweny works in straitened circumstances, with minimal modern equipment (camera, paper, chalk, pencil, mobile phone); a computer (for editing) is a recent addition to the weapons in his armoury. But this makes no difference to the power of his work, so beautiful and so resonant. As our critic Laura Cumming wrote, reviewing an exhibition of his photographs at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham in 2014: “His work has great breadth, depth and empathy… What would he make with more advanced technology? The question becomes irrelevant.” |