Poshya Kakl

Poshya Kakl is one of the most progressive young female performance artists currently working in Kurdistan-Iraq. Poshya graduated from the College of Fine Arts in Erbil in 2009. Poshya's art deals directly with her identity as a Kurdish woman living in Iraq. Her performance work is about her living reality and reflects systems of kinship, gender, religion, barriers and borders. Painting, design, words, poems and drawing all contribute to how she develops her ideas into live actions. Despite geographical, cultural and border restrictions, she continues to collaborate with artists working in performance all over the world. In Kurdistan-Iraq, she has made a series of performance actions and films such as KnittingIron,a film made at the women’s jail in Erbil supported by the Ministry of Youth and Culture.

Poshya has recently shown time-based and transmitted performance actions as part of CHAOS at Open Space, Victoria, Canada (2010), DISTANCE at Stoke Newington International Airport, London (2010), CHAOS with Bbeyond, Belfast (2010), ArTrend festival, Taiwan (2009), My Land festival, Croatia (2009, 2011), as part of PAVES at the National Review of Live Art, Glasgow (2010) and at Liminal Space, curated by Sonja Dyer, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff, Wales. In 2011 Poshya presented a film and performance work entitled Knitting Iron detailing the unknitted lives of young girls at the BE Festival, Birmingham. The film also premiered at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast as part of a group show Others’ Stories curated by Peter Richards & Sarah McAvera.

Forthcoming work includes Poshya’s residency period with CAUTION at the Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast (Aug - Sep 2011) and at the RUA RED gallery, Tallaght, South Dublin, Ireland (Nov 2012 – Jan 2013).