Hiwa K

‘To remember, sometimes you need other archaeological tools,’ says the voice over in Hiwa K’s Pre-Image (Blind as the Mother Tongue). The video depicts the artist walking across fields, wastelands, estates, going from Turkey to Athens and then to Rome, a path that mirrors his own journey as a child, when he fled Iraqi Kurdistan and reached Europe by foot. His “Pre-images” are fragments of a path whose final destination is uncertain. Commissioned by Documenta 14.

When the artist felt a pain in his lower back—“sharp, deep, ancient”—he went to the hospital for a scan and was told that he had a kidney stone that only invasive surgery could remove. Preferring to avoid, if possible, the transactional nature of the contemporary medical industries, he went to visit a local traditional healer. What happened would call into question the marginalization of Indigenous forms of knowledge and healthcare by the corporate interests of Western medicine, which “arrived into Kurdistan after the war, like an invasion.”

In the last four decades, many people have come from Iraq as refugees. In 1991, a division was created between northern Iraq (Kurdistan) and the rest of Iraq. The UN considers Kurdistan a safe zone. As a refugee you have to come from the unsafe zone, or at least prove that you do, in order to qualify to be granted asylum. During the interview for refugee status, an official checks to see whether you really come from the unsafe zone. They ask about small details of the city you claim to come from, and compare your answers to a map to confirm that your answers correspond to it. If you cannot prove that you come from the unsafe zone, you are sent back to your country. This is a story about someone who we can call M. M tried to apply for asylum in one of the Schengen countries. He was not aware that the city he came from was in the safe zone, according to the UN. He was rejected, and was set to be deported back to his country. Then he meets J, a man from the unsafe zone.