Walid Siti

Walid Siti (b. 1954, Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan) is a Kurdish Iraqi artist based in London. He works in installation, sculpture, drawing and works on paper, video and painting, and trained in printmaking. Towers and mountains recur in his work.

He graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1976 and continued his studies in Ljubljana, then in Yugoslavia, before seeking political asylum in the United Kingdom in 1984. His work draws on the cultural heritage of a homeland crossed by militarised borders and migration, and on the part natural landscapes and built landmarks play in collective memory. The Black Tower was shown at Zilberman Gallery, Berlin, in 2017, and Right to Climb was a public installation at the London Festival of Architecture in 2020 and at the Tobacco Factory, Bristol, in 2021.

He took part in PlanetK, a collateral event of the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009), the Pavilion of Iraq at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011) and The Great Game, the Pavilion of Iran at the 56th (2015). His work is in the collections of the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, Mathaf and Sharjah Art Foundation.