17 05 17 — 16:03
I have the possibility to travel.
I live in a city with a lot of borders: religion, nationality, culture, politics, traffic, money, knowledge and the ‚borders‘ between the tribes. Between all these borders, there is one which we all face together, that of time. Every second, our life passes by, – the battery drains, and then we die. And in the end maybe we want to have time again, but it is over.
As an artist I get the possibility to travel. This is because a German artist saw my artwork in Baghdad, and then we worked together (in Baghdad). After that she made contact with art organisations, who invited me to Germany as an artist. This is how I began to traverse the border of Arabic society.
I had some special experiences while travelling, when I crossed the border from Iraq to other countries, such as crossing the border into Mexico. This is where I started thinking about borders, and I produced some artworks about these border situations. Once back in Baghdad, I made the video piece ‚One day in Baghdad‘. In this video I made interviews with different people, starting each interview with the question:
Where would you like to travel?
And what about the borders of religion, can we live without them? In Islam for example, there is a border between paradise and hell. The border can be as thin as a hair, and it‘s only if you are virtuous that you can pass it; if you are bad you will fail. Religion also offers the possibility to decide to forgive others who hurt you and, not to show them your power. In Islam it is said: apologise to the other seventy times. And you really need a lot of strength when you fight with the borders you erect yourself.
There are a lot of questions about borders and I would like to address a few of them in my artwork. So I hope to understand them. Two more questions are:
Why is there nationality? We all have the same body.
And:
Why something is accesible for some people, but presents a border to be crossed for others?
I will try to talk through my work about the borders that I mentioned. With my artwork I would like to connect people in Wittenberg with Baghdad, the city where I live.
