Head's Back

Photos of the head: Soran Salam

2005 Head’s back

The work combines fifteen prints in various tones but the same original photographs of my head; my effort was to rebuild the part we missed because of culture. At the time, there was a big positivity toward anything related to Kurdish culture, but in the work I was trying to look at culture critically.

Children in Kurdistan were tied up inside a cradle when they were born until they became older and could no longer stay in the cradle; in this process, the soft part at the child's head's back becomes pressed and flattened. This depressed part of the head metaphorically leaves a bigger depression in humans when they grow, as they are effortfully trying to rebuild their lost part.

The work was part of the 2005 Project exhibition; at the time, it was a new effort from our younger generation to discover working with other media and concepts outside painting.