"When I was a child and I played with my planes, I had the feeling that a piece of sky belonged to me, it was a place for playing and daydreaming. After the war, everything changed: the sky no longer belonged to us. Only my studio embodies this feeling. As in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights, my flying carpet allows me to travel everywhere in my imagination and, like Aladdin's magic lamp, my genius inspires me".
Bilal bahir
Born in Baghdad, Iraq
Lives and works in Namur, Belgium
Graduated in 2008 from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, in sculpture.
His artistic research focuses on the diversity of cultures from a broad chronological perspective. He develops a biographical and political dimension, culminating in cycles of drawings and sketches of a dreamlike, poetic nature.
He raises the question of the state of war and human existence through the many changes in Iraqi society. In his poetic drawings, culture, politics, economics and history, as well as the West and the East, the present and the past, merge harmoniously.
The pictorial elements express the artist's deep commitment to the major issues of our time: the place of the individual in the midst of the conflicts and changes that are shaking the world and affecting human beings at the very heart of their lives.
The red line that runs through all his artistic work has its origins in the cradle of humanity: Mesopotamia. It is here that the artist's questioning begins, a questioning that he shows through a panorama of significant historical and cultural facts.
Through his drawings, Bahir, like a scriptwriter, unfolds his thoughts using images of events he has lived through or dreamt about. On the pages of old books, he unfolds his world, his dreams and harsh reality. Through his drawings on the pages of old books, he undertakes to rewrite his own history, like the history of humanity. In his practice, Bilal Bahir uses a wide range of media and techniques, involving installations, videos, collages, drawings, sculptures and objects.
Bilal Bahir has participated in various art fairs and events, including a solo exhibition at the Plantin - Moretus Museum in Antwerp in 2022, as well as taking part in an Off exhibition at the Mountados Biennial of Contemporary Art (Greece) in 2022, the Brussels International Contemporary Drawing Fair Art On Paper in 2021, and La Triennale de Bruges in 2021. He has also taken part in numerous solo and group exhibitions.