ISMAIL KHAYAT

With the Anfal Memory series, Ismail Khayat, the former head of Kurdistan’s Art Department of the Ministry of Culture Art, honors the 182,000 Kurds who were killed by order of Saddam Hussein. Painted in watercolor and India ink, the masks are boldly expressive and colorful, yet stand as memorials created by an artist who escaped the terrible genocide.

Khayat was born in Khanaken, Kurdistan in 1944, and has been a member of the Iraqi Artist Association since 1965 and the Iraqi Artist Syndicate since 1970. After teaching art in Sulaymania for twenty-four years, he became supervisor of all arts activities in the region, curating numerous art exhibitions throughout Iraq and participating in sixty-five group exhibitions and international exhibitions in Damascus, Jordan, Paris, Japan, Sweden, Russia, eastern Europe, and South Korea.

His work can be found in many European and Japanese private collections, and twenty-five of his works are owned by the Iraqi National Museum. Khayat’s prior visit to the United States was in the summer of 2001, when he participated in the special seminar, “Civil Life in Iraqi Kurdistan” in Washington, DC.