In a new film from our Extended Play series, Hiwa K discusses his desire to make artwork that is understandable to a wide audience. Describing his video and sculpture installation, The Bell Project (2007–2015)—seen installed at MoMA PS1 in New York City—the artist explains how he spent years following and filming a Kurdish scrap yard owner named Nazhad, who collected the U.S. and European military waste that was sold to an used in Iraq during the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars. Melted down into bricks of raw metal, these weapons of war took on new life and became, as the artist states, “possibilities of transformation.”
Expressing his own difficulty with the art often exhibited in museums and his intention to make his work intelligible to all viewers, Hiwa K states, “I have an affair with knowledge, I don’t have a relationship with knowledge. I don’t want to overdose my work with philosophy.”
