Bayan jaf

I’m Bayan jaf, I work as freelance artist, I have a diploma in Fine art from university of the arts London (Central Saint Martins) and still studying (at the third and last year of my BA, I live in Dubai, holding Iraqi passport with long residency in UAE
Between the past and the present and the war and aftermath I born to embody an ironical role with sense of sorrow and mourning. My contemporary memoir of wars and challenging events. from which Iraq and Kurdistan were suffering , inherited me a perception of what war is , its harmful moments and its mental and social extensions, I employ many media and toold in my artistic practice, for instance, sculpture, painting ,installation and video. concentrating on photo montage and transfer images by using masking tape.

We living in the moment of pictures and every camera scene witnessing these moments and recording them as pictures. the photographs of the work of art created are ongoing artistic projects. in my latest collection of works of art I apply and use photographs from works and assets from the archives of the British Museum and sees these photographs and assets as single history and work of art with unprecedented connotations that reflect the valuable object’s purpose.

The artworks display the time before, after and beyond the war in a philosophical illustration that simulates mourning and storytelling.

In terms of my personality traits, I would like to note that I am an absolutely positive and active person who always seeks new learning opportunities and is open to exploring new cultures and civilizations. Moreover, I consider myself to be an Artist of the World, as art for me is the first step of research, whereby this accurate and extensive process is based upon factual events usually retrieved from newspapers, magazines, the Internet, or books. As such, working around a newspaper article could render it into holistic research which, in turn, will become a work of at expressing the details of such event. Based upon my belief that art bears within it a social mission aimed at assisting human beings at creating change, the aforementioned has motivated me into interacting with life and its facts, as to produce a factual work of art. Hence, I have always said that : ”Whenever art is unable to change our reality, it certainly incites change”, and thus an artist shall always remain an essential element of the community in which he lives as , in sum, he is the creation of such society.

In this respect, my art has been based upon the theme of war and the post-war era, where it somehow reflects my personal experience at life where I have lived in Iraq during both wars and have experienced the Halabja genocide which has left its trace among my work reflecting my Kurdish identity in the first place and the fact of being a citizen of the world as well. Thus this theme has inspired me to step into the world.