Born in 2001, Gulan Hamza is a talented female artist from Duhok who uses her powerful paintings to explore themes of displacement, migration, and the collective trauma of the Kurdish people. Having graduated with honors from the Department of Painting at the Duhok Institute of Fine Arts in 2022, she is now studying at the Department of Painting at the College of Fine Arts at Duhok University.

Hamza recently spoke with Kurdistan Chronicle to discuss her latest art project, “Immigration,” which is currently being exhibited in Erbil with support from the German Goethe-Institut Irak and the Framing Photojournalism School in Erbil.

A daughter’s reflection

As a young woman, while Hamza did not personally endure the traumas that she depicts, she explained that she feels closer to father’s generation than her contemporaries. She attributes the pain and hardship that she illustrates in her work to stories that her father told her of the suffering of the Kurdish people.

The exodus of one million Kurds from Kurdistan in 1991 has had a profound effect on her art, with many of her paintings focusing on the things that were needed most during that event. “I wasn’t alive then, but because I’ve heard the story a lot, I feel like I lived it. We also saw displacement and immigration during the fight against ISIS, so migration is a common theme in my work,” Hamza said.

Hamza also reiterated the necessity of embodying a community’s stories; thus, depictions of this forced migration run deeply through her works. “The migrants were fleeing the brutality and oppression of the Iraqi Ba’athist dictatorship. Our family, like most Kurdish families, participated in this exodus, so my father often tells us that tragic story. In fact, my father wrote about it in the artist’s statement for my exhibition.”

Hamza underscored that her father is a major source of inspiration for her as an artist and person. He is also very supportive of her work. “My father is very helpful. We are very close.”

Connecting with the Kurdish struggle

Hamza spoke of her father’s connection to three decades of the struggle for the rights of the Kurdish people, noting that he has been sharing his experiences with her since she was 13: “These stories relate a struggle that has been ongoing for years to this day and is very connected to Kurdish feelings, and therefore has had a direct impact on me,” she said.

With tears in her eyes, Hamza explained that, when she paints, she often cries.

She clarified that her aim in “Immigration” was to ensure that the tragedies that have befallen the Kurds are not forgotten and to send a message to the whole world that the Kurds have suffered many tragedies. “I would like to be able to open up exhibitions abroad in the future and convey my messages worldwide,” she said.

Hamza also mentioned how she connects with her friends through her paintings. “My friends are very interested in my paintings, which have influenced their thinking about the history of our nation. Since they are my age, they are not as aware of the past as I am, so when they see the paintings, they want to know more about them.”

There are many Kurds with the first name ‘Gulan’, but the origin of her name is different – like everything else in her life, she says. She is named for the Shorshi Gullan, or April Revolution, and her father’s connection to when the Kurds revolted against Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1975.

Mohammad Dargalayi is a journalist and photographer with 14 years of experience. He is a member of IFJ Global.