Anas Kahal rođen je 1985. u Damasku (Sirija). U Damasku od 2004 do 2009 završava preddiplomski studij na Akademiji Likovnih Umjetnosti. Između 2011 i 2017 završava diplomski studij na Akademiji Likovnih Umjetnosti u Karlsruheu. Boravio na umjetničkim rezidencijama u Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Kuestlerhaus-Lukas Ahrenshoop i Hangar Barcelona. Živi i radi u Freiburgu u Njemačkoj.
Anas Kahal was born in 1985 in Damascus (Syria). He completed a bachelor's degree at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Damascus between 2004 and 2009. He came to Germany where he studied from 2011 to 2017 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe. He's been to Art residencies in the Cité Internationale des Arts Paris, Kuestlerhaus-Lukas Ahrenshoop and Hangar Barcelona. He lives and works in Freiburg im Breisgau in Germany.
Anas Kahal
Flags, 2023 / Zastave, 2023.
video, 25'00'' (single-channel video, found-footage, color, sound) / video, 25'00'' (jednokanalni video, pronađene snimke, boja, zvuk)
In the video Flags Anas Kahal combined Found Footage of the Syrian war with brightly colored surface. The video materials he found on YouTube which show the brutal reality of war were omnipresent on all television channels and websites during the war. Many Syrians were overwhelmed by the content and the flood of images. Kahal was born and grew up in Damascus and studied art there. He was lucky not to have to experience the war himself. He followed the destruction and changes in Syria from Germany and had been concerned with media manipulation. During the war years in Syria, many radical fighting groups existed for a sudden and took part in the war. Each group pursued its own political goals, had its own name and demonstrated its own flag. This belonging to the groups erased the individual. Suddenly it was no longer important what the fighter was called, or what he looked like. What counted was to which group he belonged to and what they were fighting for. The video Flags is above place and time. It shows the language of war, destruction, death and violence in general. In that sense, it doesn’t matter if one of the footage was in fact shot, for example, in Iraq instead of Syria or in 2012 instead of 2015 though Kahal collects all the Footage from YouTube under the searches of the “actual Syrian War“ or “Free Syrian Army”. In this work he was inspired by the composition of flags, by combination of Found Footage and the colorful surface that covers the brutality and shows it at the same time. The video is an attempt to approach the absurdity of war with the help of abstraction.
U video radu Zastave, Anas Kahal kombinirao je pronađene snimke rata u Siriji s jednoličnom površinom jarkih boja. Video materijali koje je pronašao na YouTubeu, a koji prikazuju surovu ratnu zbilju, bili su sveprisutni na televizijskim kanalima i web stranicama tijekom rata. Mnogi Sirijci bili su preopterećeni sadržajima i poplavom slika. Kahal je rođen i odrastao u Damasku i tamo studirao umjetnost. Imao je sreću da sam nije doživio rat. Pratio je razaranja i promjene u Siriji iz Njemačke i bio zabrinut zbog manipulacije medijima. Tijekom ratnih godina u Siriji su u jednom trenutku postojale i sudjelovale u ratu mnoge radikalne borbene skupine. Svaka grupa je slijedila svoje političke ciljeve, imala je svoje ime i isticala svoju zastavu. Ta pripadnost grupama izbrisala je pojedinca. Odjednom više nije bilo važno kako se borac zove, niti kako izgleda. Bitno je kojoj grupi pripada i za što se bori. Video rad Zastave je iznad mjesta i vremena. Prikazuje jezik rata, razaranja, smrti i nasilja općenito. U tom smislu, nije važno je li jedna od snimki doista snimljena, na primjer, u Iraku umjesto u Siriji ili 2012. umjesto 2015. iako Kahal prikuplja sve snimke s YouTubea pod pretragom ''actual Syrian War'' (aktualni sirijski rat) ili ''Free Syrian Army'' (slobodna sirijska vojska). U ovom radu bio je inspiriran kompozicijom zastava, kombinacijom pronađenih stvarnih snimki i jarke površine koja prikriva brutalnost i istovremeno je ističe. Video je pokušaj približavanja apsurdnosti rata uz pomoć apstrakcije.
