I was born in 1962. I grew up during the military conflicts; I went to Institute of Art, graduated in 1985. I lived and taught arts and later at Camberwell School of Art in London. His current doctoral research investigates artists’ responses to crimes against humanity and documenting Anfal /Kurdish Genocide through drawing.
The work of contemporary Kurdish artist Osman Ahmed looks back on the experiences of the Kurdish people during the Anfal repression by Saddam Hussein’s forces in 1988. Forced to flee from Iraq, Ahmed journeyed to Iran where he was imprisoned, and later to Syria, Russia and the UK. His displacement show last summer at IWM reflects the plight of the Kurdish people shown in his drawings, where crowds of people migrate endlessly through a deserted landscape towards an unknown destination. Individual stories are evoked in a collection of bright, intense acrylic works and the exhibition last summer also includes a series of dark, abstract drawings from the artist’s experience in prison. This exhibition, displayed in the John Singer Sargent Room with the First World War painting ‘Gassed’, pays contemporary tribute to the endurance of civilians in the face of chemical attack, forced migration, mass killing and deep suffering.
witnessing many victims ; In March 1988 I witnessed the Anfal until when I managed to escape and get to as I had nowhere else to take refuge to I moved into Britain where I have been painting/exhibiting my works on the Anfal and studying/researching into how to document the genocide through drawing. My PhD project, documenting the Kurdish Genocide 1988, is concerned with the victims of the attacks in Kurdistan Iraq
