Meet the Artists

Meet Featured Artist Rebwar Saed

For more than thirty years, artist Rebwar Saed has been an artistic ambassador for his native Kurdistan. His paintings depict human values, nature and have a special emphasis on shared emotional values present across cultures. His paintings have been the subject of several exhibitions throughout Europe and across Japan. Born in 1962 Dr. Saed struggled his entire life to perfect his artistic style and spent several years in London where he earned his PhD in Fine Arts. Dr. Saeed is currently the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of Sulaimani. Refusing to affiliate with any specific school of art, Dr. Saed has placed special emphasis on color in his work.

“[Colors] have special importance to me. However, they are not a fixed element in all my work. In the past when the Iraqi fighter jets were shelling us [at the end of the First Gulf War], I used gray to indicate happy days because the jets were unable to see us in cloudy weather. The miserable days were represented by the colors of a clear sky and bright sun because on those days we were [bombarded by jet fire]… After coming to Europe, I used vivid colors again to express happiness in my paintings. In my project 5000 Portraits 5000 Victims, I assigned the colors of happiness and life to the victims because I wanted to emphasize that the war should not take those colors away.”

Meet Mina

Mina Sabah Rashid, a young emerging artist from Sulaymaniyah draws to demonstrate how women can make life colorful even though society does not provide them with many colors. A friend of the Jiyan Foundation, Mina and her family work to provide healing and opportunity to their neighbors and community through artistic outreach and therapeutic healing programs.

All proceeds from Mina's collection provide transportation and psychotherapeutic treatment for women and children who have survived violence and human rights violations in northern Iraq.