art – Digital Archive of the Middle East

Serving this collection was an eye-opening opportunity for me to look at collections of art from a different angle. We’re inspired to make art and be creative depending on our singular view of an artwork, and this sticks us to the surface. In other words, if one looks at a body of work collectively, the difference that it makes is that it takes you to the depths of the creative world. This archiving experience made me ask questions such as: why does an artist choose to create art in collections and not in singular pieces, and why does Khayat have so many various forms to express one message? These questions were provoking me to overthink my creativity and to see the difference, I had to create differently: collective works versus individual works.

It’s hard to look through a good archive and not have certain sensations rise; we are experiencing it. One can gain insight into Khayat’s art by experiencing his body of work; moreover, one can investigate the cultural significance and the periods of Kurdish art during that specific era, which Khayat worked in, and this is only possible with the existing archive. Since there wasn’t a culture of preserving heritage and documenting great works, many parts of Kurdish history, especially our cultural and artistic sides, are missing.

Here, Kashkul comes in. With the authentic agenda of finding that creative aspect and preserving what is present, a great project such as The Visual Archive is born with a handful of visionary young hearts who are aware of what they’re doing and of the importance of their work. Kashkul’s creative space has been a formative guide in learning the process of making archives and in continually rediscovering what becomes possible with their products, with how personal and impactful these collections can be. The collection doesn’t only hold the artwork, but such valuable words from the artists, interviews, and notes with the patience of the ants that build a city underground with single grains of dust. Every art piece’s description shows the given care and attention it deserves. Each piece in Khayat’s collection is a narrator of a story, of every individual who has faced injustice and grievance on our land. In most of his work, I see his take on the tragedies of the destructive fate of being Kurdish, we’ve grown up hearing about and continue to be its witness ourselves.

I came into this collection working on its metadata; I wasn’t there when the team worked with Khayat himself and created the archives in his presence. But now, the digital exhibitions take me back in thought, making me wonder how priceless it must have been to engage with an artist in the act of preserving every collection he produced in his lifetime—and what it must feel like, as an artist, to know that your works won’t fade into oblivion like those of many Kurdish artists, writers, and poets we’ve lost but will be preserved, studied, and lived for generations through this archiving project. Khayat collaborated with others throughout his life, and sharing his archive with Exeter University feels like a faithful acknowledgment of that collaborative spirit.

Nawa Amin | August 14^th 2025

Slemani

The first time I saw Ismail Khayat’s work, it felt like a dream made from the soil, sky, and the sorrows of Kurdistan. Faces emerged from cracked earth; birds hovered between flight and capture; colors bled into one another like memories too urgent to fade. Born in 1944 in the border town of Xaneqîn, Khayat carried the mountains and rivers of his homeland into his canvases; he also carried its wounds. Working over fifty years, we saw him rise with the modern Kurdish art, and spoke of himself as only a witness.

Khayat’s work told universal stories of what’s felt, what’s seen, what’s survived. His art also showed the fluid, flowing lines of a pen that seemed as if to create beauty so easily, and this in itself spoke of hope. It invited you to linger. Exhibited across Europe, the Middle East, and America, his work didn’t lose its grounding in the Kurdish landscape, even as it learned to speak more and more the visual language the world saw.

His Voice in the Archive

We interviewed Khayat in Slêmanî, in his gallery, in the Kashkul office. We toured Xaneqîn, Pîrer and Helebce with him; he spoke about his earliest memories of drawing: “Students were taught English on the figures I drew. I watched movies in Xaneqîn Cinema, and always drew the scenes and the characters on the margins of any book I had at hand. These were my first trainings.” That resourcefulness never left him. Even in times of war, when materials were scarce, he found ways to keep creating.

He talked with us on the themes in his work. The recurring masks, he explained, came from a childhood memory of villagers covering their faces during dust storms: “A mask can hide you from the world, but it can also protect you from it. In our lives, we have needed both.” The birds were, in his words, “my messengers. They carry the news of our people to places I cannot go.”

And perhaps most strikingly, when we asked him about the political edge of his art, he told us: “I do not paint politics. I paint life. But life is political.”

When we were repainting the stones with him in Pîrer, the no man’s land between the PUK and KDP during the civil war, he had so many stories to tell us: “The project started with a Board advocating for peace that consisted of six members from both KDP and PUK. This place was divided, but the part in which I worked belonged to neither party. I brought both sides to pay for this project. The art in this place connected the two parties together. I collected all the bullets around that area, dug a hole, and buried them there. I was not sure the project would have what results. But, it became the subject of family discussions in their homes. Some critique was that I bolded the borders between the parties, but I replied that what I created was a beautiful necklace to nature.”

The Kashkul Archive

At Kashkul, we’ve always worked to keep cultural memories safe. When we began archiving Ismail Khayat’s work, we understood the gravity of the task. It was the preservation of a lifetime’s witness. We catalogued hundreds of items, from large canvases to sketches, each one a fragment of Khayat’s journey.

We wanted his voice documented, too. The interviews became as important as the images, because they carried his humor, his words, and his eyes. We grew as people when creating this archive; it was teaching us approaches, styles we would come back to.

From Sulaimani to Exeter

This year, the digital archive will travel to the University of Exeter. The decision to host his works there is a continuation of Khayat’s lifelong conversation with the world, and all that he taught us about what collaborations can do. Exeter’s commitment to Kurdish and Middle Eastern studies offers a platform where his art can speak to scholars, students, and the public far beyond Kurdistan’s borders. From the Kashkul Visual Arts, the digital exhibition will also bring the journey we took with Khayat to create this archive.

His Enduring Legacy

At Kashkul, we were never just working with Ismail Khayat. We were friends who talked about art over tea, who argued about colors and symbols, who planned projects and exhibitions with equal parts tangles and laughter. His presence in our space, even as he spoke so softly, carried an energy that seemed to fill the whole room.

I last saw him at Kashkul’s Through the Smoke Behind the Curtain exhibition for Hawre Khalid. Ismail arrived in a denim jacket and jeans, casual in his style, but also active in his style. He was always urging us to rally together for something left unfinished, a campaign, as he’d call it—”Let’s run a campaign to reorganize the paintings,” “Let’s rally together to finish the digitization.”

That day, he wasn’t feeling well. That didn’t matter, he went to art exhibitions, cultural events just the same.

After that night, we never met again. Shene and I left for the US on December 21, 2019. The very first person to call us in Iowa City was Ismail Khayat. His voice brought warmth to the city’s shocking cold. That would be the last time we spoke.

It’s striking how the little things remain. The way he would lean over a table at Kashkul. The way he looked so closely at an artwork in his gallery. The small sweetener tablets he added to his tea. I would look at him in a room full of people, see him always looking, and know he was soon sketching on paper.

At Kashkul, we archived his colors and lines in the hope of archiving the history he poured into them. And in my mind, his denim jacket, our last phone call, the quiet knowledge that friendship, like art, often outlives us, complete the archive.

Ismail once told me, “Art is the only passport they cannot confiscate.” In the journey his work takes from Slêmanî to Exeter, I am reminded that in sharing his legacy, we honor not only him but the lasting stories in his art.

Pshtiwan Babakr

August 11, 2025

Slêmanî