The Dado Project

The makeup of society and the reaction of humans to their surroundings and with the ‘new’ is worthy of scrutiny, especially the ‘new’ because with the ‘new’ there is an element of the unknown which is filled by human imagination.

Kurdish and Eastern society is going through a special period due to the information revolution, the vast media and unparalleled production. Humans cannot absorb and properly used everything they see and come across on a daily basis. For example, if someone hears something about nanotechnology for the first time, everything about the topic is novel to him. It confuses him. He then relates the information to someone else who is also unfamiliar with the topic. In this way, a whole range of related information emerges, each of which contains elements of imagination and new stories. Or when our mothers or any other person around us see a new product in their homes, they think of the uses they could put the product to. We have seen many such examples. For instance, the use of CD covers as seed containers or bombs as house foundations. Each of these products relates the imagination and creativity of people. What is important to me is that imagination and that changing of the uses of material and information in daily life. It is also important to do this project at this time, when this society is going through a fundamental change away from a closed system through a rapid opening towards the outside world, even though it has not yet escaped the influence of the closed system and hasn’t yet entered an open state. It is in a state when everything is still new to it. This state of fundamental change is a temporary one- it neither has existed in the past nor will it exist in the future.

The installation is made up of a range of different works. The project started as a single person concept and was later expanded into a joint project. It contains various works that arose out of discussions between our artist friends. Some of the works were concepts only and were finished during the exhibition. All of them were shown in the exhibition on 17 March 2010.

Why the Sulaimany Sera building?

The Sera building was crucial to the project because this building has the history of Sulaimany city over it – both from a historical perspective this being the oldest official building and also because the building’s role has changed many times in the history of the city.

Now, efforts are being made to again clean the building, return it to its original form, and prepare it for a new role as the museum of Sulaimany city. The building has assisted the project in various ways.

During the exhibition, no official government work was being done in the building. It is a special time between the building’s government role and its new role as a museum. The walls had been stripped of all official artefacts, so they did not distract the artists or other people. Also, the building is in the heart of the city and in the middle of the city’s life and activity and it is within everyone’s easy reach. Many people may end up in the exhibition unintentionally.

The name of the project

In the beginning, the concept for this project was introduced to others under the name ‘transform’. But that name had a few problems, such as the fact that the name was very generic and took you to a lot of other places. We looked for a replacement name for some time with no avail. Also, the project was not created on a theoretic basis. No work was made to find a theoretical basis for it. Instead, it was a search through several trends and efforts. I wanted the name of the project to emerge as a result of thinking within the project. A dictionary name would have taken away from the specificity of the project. For that reason, when searching for a local name or a name that has arisen from within the project, my attention was drawn to the textual work of Sherko Abbas. Its name reflects the concept of the project in many ways. In one way, the project arose from the observation as to how in these new countries, because of the lack of information, often products or other things are used in different ways. These different uses define the culture and personality of the individuals. We can in this way study culture and the conduct of individuals.

This to me was not a negative situation. Sherko’s work got closer to this in that as a child, Sherko used to use the word ‘dado’ to describe and name everything. In this way, Sherko prides himself with his ability as a child to reduce everything in the world to a single word and at the same time, can describe everything with a single word. We never criticise children when they do this but we are amazed by it.

We didn’t want to lose this amazement in our project towards that delicate stage in which society because of its lack of understanding of certain things around it, uses them in its own way.