The Troubled Bear and The Palace

By

Walid Siti

Film still from ‘The Troubled Bear and The Palace’

An experimental documentary about an abandoned bear at the remains of Saddam's palace.

At the 7,000 ft peak of the Gara mountains in Kurdistan of Iraq, the remains of Saddam's palace, built in 1989, still stand. 29 years later, in March of 2018, two caged bears were escorted by a group of local media and Kurdish women forces to be ceremoniously freed at the helipad adjacent to the palace.

Having lived dependently and in captivity throughout its life, the bears struggled to survive in the wild. One vanished whilst the other was at the mercy of the personnel that guard the telecommunication towers erected at the palace. The surreal juxtaposition of the stressed bear and the dilapidated palace, set amongst the magnificent mountains, encapsulates the tragedy of the people of this land throughout history, from the time of Gilgamesh to the present.

To watch ‘The Troubled Bear and The Palace’ click the link below:

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Walid Siti

Walid Siti was born in 1954, in the city of Duhok, in Iraqi-Kurdistan. After graduating in 1976 from the Institute of Fine arts in Baghdad, Siti left Iraq to continue his arts education in Ljubljana, Slovenia before seeking political asylum in 1984 in the United Kingdom where he lives and works.

Formerly trained in printmaking, Siti works extensively in a variety of mediums including video, installation, 3D works, work on paper and painting. His works traverse a complex terrain of memory and loss, while at the same time offering an acute insight into a world, which for him has been a place of constant change. The narrative of Siti’s experience, of a life lived far from but still deeply emotionally connected to the place of one’s birth, is one he shares with many exiles; he takes inspiration from the cultural heritage of his native land that is crisscrossed with militarized borders and waves of migration. The artist’s work considers the tensions between collective identity, interdependence and the constraints placed on the individual by themes of heritage, tradition, homes, borders, mobility and migration.

Siti’s work has been exhibited internationally, at Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin, at the Imperial war Museum, London, at Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris, at the Sharjah Biennial with prize award, and at the Venice Biennale, 2009, 2011,2015. Yinchuan Contemporary Art Museum, China(MOCA), “Systems and Patterns”, International Centre of Graphics, Ljubljana, Slovenia, Bruges Triennial, Belgium.

https://www.walidsiti.com/