Walid Siti

Mountains, in their diverse forms, have been a constant source of inspiration for Walid Siti, who uses their visual patterns as metaphors to convey ideas of politics, society, culture and identity.

The Magic Mountain is a formation of soldier figurines dotting the shape of an imaginary mountain, which possesses an illusory and eerie quality – that of shaping a reality marked with confinement, exclusion and violent confrontation. Three Peaks is a political and aesthetic exploration of mountainous forms created from materials that alternate the weightlessness of straws with the solidity of wood – a contrast from which ideas of mediation, imagination, tradition and history emerge.

Walid Siti (1954, Iraq) is a Kurdish-born artist who lives and works in London. He works with installation, 3D work, works on paper, and painting. The narrative of Siti’s experience, of a life lived far from but still deeply emotionally connected to the place of his birth, is one he shares with many exiles; he takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of his native land, which is crisscrossed with militarized borders and waves of migration. His work has been exhibited internationally, at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, the Imperial War Museum, London, Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris, the Sharjah Biennial and the Venice Biennale in 2009, 2011 and 2015.