Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1954 Duhok, Kurdistan, Iraq

Year of Migration to the UK: 1984

Biography

Artist Walid Siti was born, one of five children, into a Kurdish Sunni Muslim family in Duhok, Iraq (now Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region within present-day Iraq) in 1952. His father played a crucial role in the Kurdish revolutionary movement, which frequently led to his imprisonment. As the family’s primary provider, his frequent absences compelled Siti and his siblings to work after school to help support the household. Siti first studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad where he graduated in 1976. He then immigrated to Yugoslavia and enrolled in an MSc graphic art course at the Academy of Fine Arts in Ljubljana (today in Slovenia), studying there from 1977 to 1982. However, as the rise of Ba’athist Iraq brought socio-political isolation and economic deterioration, Siti did not see a future for himself in Iraq, nor was he able to stay in Yugoslavia. During this period, Iraq and Yugoslavia maintained strong diplomatic relations, resulting in considerable adversity for those, like Siti, who expressed dissent against the rule of Saddam Hussein. In 1984, amid the tumult of the Iran-Iraq War and escalating Kurdish conflicts, Siti applied for political asylum and in that year immigrated to London, England.

Siti’s oeuvre includes painting, printmaking, and installation art. Originally trained in printmaking, his practice has evolved to incorporate sketching, video, 3D, painting and installations, with his work profoundly informed by his Kurdish cultural heritage and political struggles. Thematically, his practice speaks to the experience of migration, exile and an identity caught between two cultures. He rigorously interrogates the intricate relationships between collective identity and individual autonomy, framed within the context of heritage, tradition, domicile, borders, mobility, memory, loss and migration, expressed via pieces that communicate anxiety in the face of an ambiguous future. His practice also draws on architectural elements, reflecting both cultural heritage and the contemporary imperative of rebuilding the Middle East. With (de)construction as his primary methodological concern, he transforms iconic structures, alongside their historical and cultural contexts, into contemporary configurations. This results in a disquieting depiction of a turbulent territory characterised by violent upheaval. Siti employs and modifies both synthetic and natural materials, including stiff paper, barbed wire, plaster, soldier figurines, acrylic, and straw, to generate forms that elicit novel meanings and metaphors. The end product is a metaphorical depiction of both disorientation and dislocation, referencing the precariousness of a region undergoing societal change alongside a reshaping of power structures and inadequate development.

Siti has exhibited widely in the UK and internationally. His 2014 solo exhibition RE-CONSTRUCTION featured large-scale paintings, works on paper, and installations reflecting the current cycles of change and rebuilding in Iraq, and the Middle East in general. Through his use of pyramids, ziggurats, metaphorical mountains, and ladders—symbols laden with historical and cultural significance—Siti has explored themes of creation, destruction, and rebuilding. His deconstruction of these forms highlights the transition from historical continuity to contemporary complexity, serving as a poignant metaphor for dislocation and instability. In 2012 Siti exhibited in Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam, a group show at the British Museum and, in 2015, in The Great Game: Pavilion of Iran at the 56th Venice Biennial.

Many of Siti’s solo and group exhibitions also examine migration and exile. Siti participated in the touring exhibition, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, which opened at the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in Bristol in 2019, where his work was exhibited alongside artists represented in the Ben Uri Collection, including Josef Herman, Kurt Schwitters, Jankel Adler, Lena Pillico, Camille Pissarro, and Edith Tudor-Hart, among others. This exhibition critically examined the influence of migrant artists on British art over the past 150 years, highlighting the unique and culturally enriching impact of these émigrés, particularly those who fled from eastern and central Europe during the 1930s and 1940s. Furthermore, it examined the temporary exile of refugees from the Franco-Prussian War and the First World War, extending to contemporary times to explore the contentious reception of refugees from conflict-ridden regions, such as Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. More recently, his work was included in the SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) exhibition, The Future of Traditions, Writing Pictures: Contemporary Art from the Middle East, which showcased contemporary artists from Iran and the wider Middle East, examining the negotiation between cultural backgrounds and global identities (2023).

Siti has also created several public art projects in the UK. In 2021 he executed a piece in Bristol entitled The Right to Climb, which was inspired by both Malwiya, the Minaret of the Great Mosque of Samarra north of Baghdad, and Tatlin’s iconic Monument to the Third International, to advocate for the need for art in public spaces. Walid Siti lives and works in London, England. In the UK his works are held in public collections, including the British Museum, Imperial War Museum, and the V&A.

Related books

Nat Muller, ed., Walid Siti Monograph (Heidelberg: Kehrer Verlag, 2020)
Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art, exh. cat. (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
Zachary Taylor, Born into Conflict: Kurdish Artists’ Contribution to Contemporary Art History (MA Thesis, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 2019)
Nat Muller, Walid Siti - the Black Tower, exh. cat. (Berlin: Zilberman Gallery, 2017)
Mary Angela Schroth, Acqua ferita = Wounded Water: Six Iraqi Artists Interpret the Theme of Water, exh. cat. (Rome: Gangemi Editore, 2011)

Public collections

Selected exhibitions

The Future of Traditions (group show), Brunei Gallery/SOAS, London (2023)
Heterotopia (group show), Cihan Gallery, Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan (2022)
Right to Climb (solo public art installation), Tobacco Factory, Bristol (2021)
Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (group show), Royal West of England Academy, Bristol (2019)
Age of Terror: Art since 9/11 (group show), Imperial War Museum, London (2018)
New Babylon (solo exhibition), Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey (2015)
The Great Game: Pavilion of Iran (group show), 56th Venice Biennial, Venice (2015)
Re-Construction (solo exhibition), Edge of Arabia, London (2014)
Parallel Realms (solo exhibition), Taymour Grahne Gallery, New York, USA (2014)
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam (group show), British Museum, London (2012)

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Walid Siti]

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Walid Siti artist