Kifan Alkarjousli
Artist/
Painter
Kifan Alkarjousli
Painter
Bio
BIO:
Kifan Alkarjousli, born April 2, 1988 in Damascus, is a Syrian Artist who graduated with a Bache-lor's degree in Fine Arts from Damascus University in 2014. He has been living in Germany since October 2015, and in Berlin since September 2018. He studies at the UDK in the master's de-gree in teaching art and exhibits his paintings in solo and group exhibitions in different cities.
He mainly works on paintings with oil paint on canvas and wood and works with limestone, from which he makes sculptures. Kifan Alkarjousli deals with figures, history and memories and every-day life.
ARTISTIC STATEMENT:
“The theme of memories occupies me in my art. Sometimes when I experience something, smell something or hear a certain song, I am suddenly in my village, in my family's house or at my university. I remember how I was, where I was and what I was doing and would recognize some places even with my eyes closed. I try to bring the memories that are anchored in my memory to life through symbols on my pictures. Our home is in our memory. Our personality is built by what we experience. We are always looking for something that makes us complete. Joy, love, fun, sadness. Everything we experience becomes symbols in our brain. In my works I try to bring these symbols into the real world. That's why I paint a lot of details. I want to awaken many of these symbols in people who look at my paintings. I want them to discover what they experienced 10, 20 or more years ago and find the parts they had lost. I am an artist from Syria. Now I've been living in Germany for six years, I have a German fiancée, friends, I study at the university, I speak German, I seem well integrated. But I don't feel like that, because a big part of my life, 26 years, stayed in Syria. My childhood, friends, school all this is there in my small village. The child that lives inside me has remained there. Without my memories it will no longer exist, I will no longer exist. Our history is also like that. Without the memories it would not exist, but because the story was lived not by one but by many people, it remains, because art exists to record the memories. Art is created by the living and persists beyond death”.