A photo of a new house located in Iraqi Kurdistan. The depicted building exemplifies new forms of living that came to Iraq after the shock ‘therapy’ of the Gulf Wars, of a new political order, and the application of global market economy. This situation reinforces forms of dwelling that differ dramatically from the sense of communal life before. It links the situation in Kurdistan to other socio-economic shifts around the globe and re-formulated, newly individualised societies, which used to be collective. New economic models reshaped the social structure and caused the rise of individualism and singular modes of living.

Forthcoming also as indoor installation, the work is a reconstruction of a house built recently near the minefields in Iraqi Kurdistan. Erected indoors, the replica building engages the viewer by challenging the relationship between the space that hosts it and the form that fills it up. Big enough to give an impression of a house that can be entered with a roof that can be climbed, the form is supposed to be proportioned in relation to the given space. The formal minimalism in this work is not one related to a certain period of art history but comes from pragmatism and sufficiency.