Iraq is a country traumatized by wars.

In Iraq, modern arts, especially visual arts has been put off for a long time.

Jamal and Reben are rising visual artists in Iraq. Their work is full of criticism of wars and political chaos in their country, and at the same time demonstrates distinctive Iraqi characteristics, totally different from the cliche in western journalism.

In this lecture, Jamal and Reben will share with us the processes and ideas in their program shooting, and this will be the first meeting between Iraqi photographers and Chinese audience.

Oct 26 -- 19:30am-21:30am
The meeting room on the 8th floor in Wanbao Mansion, Wanbao Road 267# , Changsha, Hunan, China

Jamal Penjweny

Independent photographer and movie-maker

Worked for and published his photos in these newspapers, magazines, agencies and websites:

New York Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, The Guardian Newspaper, Human Rights Watch, Chicago Tribune, Al-Sharql Awsat, World Press photo Magazine, The Washington Post, Yahoo News, Zuma Press, Polaris images, Taw photography magazine, Kakh magazine, Kurdistani New, Aso newspaper, Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR), The national newspaper, FOTOSEPTIEMBRE USA-SAFOTO, Financial Times, Sipa Press, Jeune afrique magazine, Driknews agency, World News Network, UNHCR, USAtoday, UNDP and Al Arabiya channel etc.

Rebeen Majeed

Independent visual artist. As the most promising and well-known visual artist in Iraq, Rebeen has always been searching ways of slow still videos. Here, he combines photography and video, painting and video perfectly and creates unique and distinctive works. His works have been displayed in many international activities. He has been curator and lecturer in many trans-national programs.

Rebeen visited the US and Europe many times, and held exhibitions and lectures there.

Rebeen Majee studied painting for five years in sulaymanyiah. Subsequently in 1999, I became a student in Sulaymaniyah College of Art - Painting Department, both with the same principle of studying on a similar program. Luckily there was a group of students interested in collective work parallel to the program

He have participated in numerous workshops in my home country run by artist and curators from Europe who come to visit and work in Kurdistan such as Ute-Meta Bauer & Aneta Szylak & Father Menix and Michael fee.

Rebeen Majeed participated in many projects that are the products of our scene's international contacts. I curate a project in sulaymanyiah, (Sara building) and in organizing for some projects, I was invited to Leipzig Academy of Visual Art in 2007 for fifteen days, for seminars with students; I was also an artist-in-residence for one month in October 2008 at London in a collaborative project between ArtRole, Artsadmin and the Live Art Development Agency.

Source: IOPF website