Simko Ahmed
colours and words
pain made me hold brushes and
love makes me continue
spring never dies
Art statement
It is not easy for imaginative flowers of Artists and Writers to grow freely. Yet the slow rain of freedom falls through intervening hardships of civilization and the fertile land embraces all truths. The freedom to express, to hear, to work and create requires us artists to maintain a pure nature so that we can understand nature itself. We need a free tongue to sing a free song. We have to break the chains that shackle our hands so that we can draw our tablets faithfully.
Art is a humanitarian and colorful message, where conception fingers dance on the vocals of idea, beauty and reality. The artist posts a message into the human conscience with the wideness of conception - eyes light and love of the human heart travel the right and wide roads of history. If the artist's message is not one of human affairs and the means of freedom and equality, then history's gate is never opened and the artist remains a dweller outside history, blind of the future.
I believe art is a violin, its substance a bow on the strings of conception. A beautiful symphony cannot be played with wry fingers of dark and reactionary thought, but can with hands that never clap to crime exploitation and never vote for darkness.
So let all the pretty precious light things spread into the world of real art through fingers which get the sun to throw its rays to human beings FOREVER.
Harui Ichiro, chairman of the Japan art critics association and founder of Jaala Biennale. talks about Simko at Gwangju Beinnale 2000 (Man plus Space ) in South Korea :
Simko Ahmed was born in Suleimani city in Kurdistan . He is the first Kurdish man to be granted Japanese citizenship . He has lived in Tokyo since 1996 . He is a civil engineer and widely exhibited artist, he is also a board member of Japanese international art association of JAALA ( Japan , Asia, Africa and Latin America art association ) where he is a regular participant as an artist ,he is also in charge of curating and selecting art works from the Middle East and Latin America for Jaala Biennale is held in the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum.
He is also founder of (Baran Art Association ) . Simko has also participated in over 14 solo art shows so far in Japan , Iraq , Canada , USA,Europe and other Asian countries . He has also participated in over 50 international art shows and Biennale in Tokyo and Seoul Metropolitan art museums and Asia 's famous Gwangju Biennale 2000 " Man + Space in South Korea.
He moved to Japan in 1996 while he was working for a Japanese NGO called "Peace Winds Japan " he started to work for international humanitarian NGOs upon his graduation from university and he has been helping refugees and people in need around the world from Asia to the Balkans , Kurdistan , Kosovo , Albania,Sierra Leone, Liberia, Japan, Afghanistan and Pakistan...ect ever since. Designing infrastructures in war-torn zones and natural disasters areas . He combines art with human rights issues.
He says, art and human rights can be like fingers and rings . Simko says pain made him hold brushes and love made him continue.
He is creative in his images , and his works are originals that tell stories based on his own experiences in life. I could hear voices coming from his art works when I first saw his painting for the first time at JAALA show in 1994 before he came to Japan. Since then I have admired his art works and the stories behind each painting. As he says, he tells us the stories of voiceless people in the sad lands around the world.
Harui Ichiro
Chairman of Japan art critics association
at Gwangju Beinnale 2000 , South Korea
