MIRAK JAMAL
Born in 1979
Live & work in Berlin

“There is definitely something related to story (and stories) in Mirak Jamal’s art. Personal history is incorporated in a temporality made up of multitudes of stories which men have successively drawn in the matter in order not to forget. It’s in building materials that Mirak Jamal has found his favorite matter. He writes stories, pictures, reminiscences of a past of wandering after his family fled Iran at the dawn of the revolution.

In 1979, the Iranian revolution broke out. Many citizens were under the obligation to flee the country. Mirak Jamal was one of them. Then followed a long wandering across Eastern, then Western Europe. A wandering that lead him even further: the United States and Canada, where the expectations of a fair and protective democracy soon collapsed. He frequents waiting rooms, highways, buildings in which apartments «pile up» and urge the child and the artist to venture their gaze on non-visible things that, step by step, forged the patterns of a creative matrix. He draws frantically the things of his childhood’s daily life: Domestic scenes, a mother in a kitchen, a parade of the Iranian militia, tanks... with ballpoint pen. Preserved by his mother, these drawings became the material of intimate history. From Iran to Russia via Germany and the United States: Mirak Jamal has explored a multitude of territories without ever really settling. Stateless artist, accustomed to the piers, he plays with these multiple identities to construct a plastic work where the engraving functions as a trace of his past.” (Marianne Robin)

Mirak Jamal
Turns, Nada, Miami, 2022

«Merbau-Garten Module II» Exhibition view, Kinderhook & Caracas, Berlin, GE, Courtesy Kinderhook & Caracas, Photo credit : Joe Clarck

«Best View In Town» exhibition view, Mirak Jamal / Mohsen Jamal - Sultana, June. 2020 © aurélien mole

Best View in Town presented by 1857, exhibition view, Kunsthall, Oslo, Norway, 2019. © Istvan Virag

A Good Neighbour, Pinakothek der Moderne, München, Germany, 2018

Installation view, 15th Istanbul Biennal, Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Sept-Nov 2017

"Stillness of a Departure", installation view, Polansky Gallery, 2017

« - cornered- », installation view, 427 gallery, Riga , 2017

Exhibition view, Mirak Djamal IRONIMUS '91, Rolando Anselmi, Berlin, 2016

Exhibition view, "Mother! Minsk! Where are you!", 2016, Galerie Sultana

Exhibition view "BRUSSELS, OCT. 29 TH. 2015", monCHERI, Brussels, Belgium, 2015.

Installation view, 1857 at Paris Internationale, 2015

"My Father", pen on paper, Minsk USSR, 1985, [2015] 120 x 300 cm, Spray paint, print transfer, Screws, carvings on drywall, wood, exhibition view "Conflicting Evidence", 1857, Oslo.

"Alex – proposition to a Detroit highway", 2015, Vinyl, automotive paint, polyester fiberglass, steel, concrete, dimensions variable, 1857, Oslo.