Kesk, sor, zer

Video Performance

„Zukunft Kollektiv“
Museum Friedland, Germany 2021

Curated by Ammar Hatem
©Grischa Stanjek

This video performance addresses the issue of color symbolism. Especially when this symbolism becomes a burden for a minority group under a dictatorship. The video performance focuses on people who have experienced injustice because they believed in the symbolism of these colors. The artwork contains many statements from people who have been victims of persecution and violence because of their Kurdish identity.

Some statements:
“The police stopped me on one of the bridges in the city of Qamishli. They ordered me to remove the green, red, and yellow tapes from my bicycle. But they didn’t let me remove it with my fingers, but I had to remove it with my teeth”.
“The police destroyed the seller’s goods, which were vegetables. Because by chance it contained a lot of green, red, and yellow peppers”.
“I had a black scarf, but there were little drawings on it. These drawings were colored green, red and yellow. They didn’t let me into the school because I was wearing it”.
“When I was a student in high school. The educational instructor slapped me in the face because I did not want to join the Arab Baath Party, which is the ruling party in Syria”.
“My name is Azad, I used to live through all forms of suffering and racism every day at school because of my name”.

“There was a morning meeting for the students every day at school. At one of these meetings. The educator saw a green, red, and yellow thread in my arm. He called me and began insulting and beating me and very loudly shouting: This is the fate of the separatist”.
“My family could not get me a birth certificate because they wanted to give me a Kurdish name”.
“So now I have an Arabic name on the identity and a Kurdish name that expresses my identity”.