A lawyer turned journalist, Kiro Urdin studied art and cinema in Paris in the seventies and has been painting since 1985. He is known for his energetic paintings which have been exhibited worldwide since 1986, in cities like Paris, Yokohama, Los Angeles, London, Stockholm and Bratislava. During the same period, in 1988, Kiro went to New York and Hollywood to pursue his film ambitions. There, he directed four films, and he keeps on directing documentaries and experimental films today.

In 1996, Kiro embarked on an epic journey around the world to create the first painting to be worked on all over the world. His idea was to incorporate elements from every place he visited into the canvas, thus symbolically bringing the world together in one undivided unity. The adventure took two years and was spread over thirty locations, from big urban cities to ancient world sites: the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the Tomb of Jesus Christ, New York, The Berlin Wall, Ohrid, Brussels, Knokke-Zoute, Bruges, Paris, Rome, Pompeii, Pisa, the Suez Canal, London, Stonehenge, Athens, the Nile, the Great Pyramids in Giza, Kenya, Machu Picchu, Cuzco, Bangkok, the Forbidden City and the Great Wall of China, Tokyo, Kamakura, the Mont Saint-Michel, and Eindhoven.

ANCESTOR

Upon receiving the invitation to exhibit his recent work at the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center of Miami, Kiro Urdin decided to revisit his unique and personal artistic and human journey with the continent. In this introspective and poetic show, the artist explores his memories and recordings of images captured along a thirty-year relationship with Africa as experienced by his numerous travels to Mali, Kenya, South Africa, Senegal, and Nigeria, but most of all through his recurring stays in Tanzania, where he directed several experimental films over the past two decades. Urdin’s relationship with Africa goes deep and beyond, in the sense that it triggered fundamental research about origin and universality in both his work and philosophy.

Klaus Pas | Curator