Bê Welat: Kurdish Art Exhibition

“bê welat*: under the lost island” is an independent art project curated by Engin Sustam and organized by Pinsapo Collective whose co-founder Öykü Tekten serves as the artistic director of the exhibition. FiveMyles Gallery in Brooklyn will host this first Contemporary Kurdish Art Exhibition in New York between January 6-February 4, 2024.

The exhibition will showcase artwork by seven contemporary Kurdish artists, connecting a cross-border network of artistic production in the US and through other diasporic communities. Pinsapo in collaboration with FiveMyles will organize public events and talks during the exhibition.

Curated by Engin Sustam, the first installation of this project took place in Berlin in 2021 with more than twenty participants and highlighted contemporary Kurdish art practice as it was expressed in Europe and other Western diasporic communities. The Berlin exhibition was the first of its kind on a global scale and we are now bringing it to New York. Voices, bodies, objects, concepts, and standpoints emerging from Kurdish art and experiences, often mediated and appropriated, will be presented through gender-conscious, micropolitical, ecological, and decolonial lenses. Since there has not been any project of this kind or scope in New York, we are humbled and honored to be its initiators.

This fundraising drive is part of the process to secure external funding for this project. We are reaching out to see if you could help us raise $15,000 so that we can hire people to assist us with finding financial support for the project, the publication of the exhibition catalogue, graphic design, promotion and other urgent production tasks. Any amount is huge and very much appreciated.

Please donate and spread the word.

With gratitude,

Pinsapo Collective

*bê welat means “without a homeland, or a stateless society” in Kurdish.

**Flyer designed by Mehmet Akif Solmaz