Born in Tawela, South Kurdistan (Iraq) Jasim Ghafur worked as an art teacher in Kurdistan before leaving the country, and moving to the UK as a political refugee in 2000. He then studied Fine Art at the University of Derby and did a MA in Fine Art at Nottingham Trent University. A founding member of Travelling Light, Long Journey Home, the Socialist Artist Association (Kurdistan) and BlankAtlas, Jasim has exhibited nationally and internationally.
The Kurdish born visual artist now works and lives in United Kingdom. As a Kurdish artist, he aims to explore contemporary and modern visual art and develop an independent, visual language that enables him to communicate his views, feeling and insights to wider audiences through his art.
– An excerpt from Frequency
In this video Jasim explores his memories in exile and the experiences that led him to leave Kurdistan.
One of the techniques Jasim employs is inserting himself into archived photographs, aiming to bridge the gap between our rational understanding of human suffering and the hope for a better world. The visual objects and symbols he uses communicate his inner responses to the phenomena of displacement, journey and wars that he has encountered.
