Walid Siti: From the series Mountains 2 (2010)

The mountain as a constant is informed by Siti’s connection to the place where he was born and raised, Dohuk. A city situated in the Northern Kurdish region of Iraq, it is surrounded by mountains on three sides.

While the mountains that characterize much of the Kurdish region have played a great role in Kurdish identity and mythology, particularly in the quest for independence (the well-known “the mountains are our only friends,” comes to mind), Siti takes what could be an immovable, exalted reference, using it as a point of inquiry and accessible engagement through the familiar.

What occurs in these paintings and installations is a way of questioning the strength of not only objects, but the formations of multiple ideas, events, and structures. An acknowledgement of power is kept, while at the same time these formations are stripped, poked at, reformed by threads, and simply taken apart in the end.

[v/ Walid Siti]