SHWAN DLER QARADAKI
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Shwan Dler Qaradaki (b. 1977, Kurdistan, Iraq) is a Norwegian-Kurdish visual artist working primarily with drawing, painting, film, installation and text. His practice explores the relationships between language, image and memory, examining how personal and collective histories are shaped by power, displacement, linguistic oppression and cultural transmission.
Drawing forms the foundation of Qaradaki’s artistic practice. Through large-scale works on paper, moving image and spatial installations, he investigates how political violence and the suppression of language shape both individual experience and collective memory. His work moves between autobiography and history, where personal memories become entry points into broader questions of identity, belonging and historical consciousness. As a Kurdish artist working within a predominantly Western art-historical context, Qaradaki is also concerned with questions of cultural and visual marginalisation. His practice asks what happens when the visual traditions available to represent oneself are themselves shaped, categorised or marginalised by dominant histories. Rather than seeking an authentic or singular cultural tradition, he works through hybridity, bringing different artistic traditions into tension with one another to develop forms of representation that can hold conflicting histories and experiences. A significant reference in this practice is the narrative spatial logic of Persian and Islamic miniature traditions. Qaradaki is interested not primarily in their decorative or stylistic qualities, but in their capacity to hold multiple spaces, events and temporalities within a single image. This narrative simultaneity becomes a way of approaching memory, displacement and historical experience, while also entering into dialogue with the traditions of Western history painting, contemporary drawing and allegorical figuration. Rather than illustrating historical events, Qaradaki creates visual allegories in which the body, language and landscape become carriers of memory. Figures may appear fragmented, deformed, hybrid or partially dissolved, while text can function simultaneously as language and image. His use of water-based media introduces an element of instability, allowing pigment, water and gesture to disrupt and challenge the act of representation itself. Qaradaki holds degrees from the Art Academy in Sulaimani and the Oslo National Academy of the Arts (KHiO), where he completed a PhD in Artistic Research in 2025. His doctoral research investigated the relationship between drawing and linguistic suppression, examining how the loss, prohibition and translation of language can be articulated through visual form. His work has been presented in solo exhibitions at institutions including Kunstnerforbundet, Galleri LNM, Tegnerforbundet, Kunsthuset Kabuso and Oslo Museum, as well as during Festspillene i Nord-Norge. His work has also been shown internationally through exhibitions and film festivals across Europe, North and South America. |
Qaradaki©2025
