Covering over decade of projects, Don’t Shrink Me to the Size of a Bullet: The Works of Hiwa K provides the first comprehensive account of the artist’s practice to date. Edited by Anthony Downey, with a foreword by Heike Catherina Mertens and Krist Gruijthuijsen, the volume includes essays by Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Natasha Ginwala, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Aneta Szyłak, and a conversation between the artist and Bakir Ali. A series of texts have been prepared and revised by the artist, and he has also included a collection of anecdotes that recount gossip, stories, jokes, personal insights, conundrums, and aphorisms garnered from multiple sources. These have all been translated into Kurdish for the first time. The volume is fully illustrated and will contain extended notes on the works.
Hiwa K was the winner of the Schering Stiftung Art Award 2016 and was awarded the Arnold Bode Prize (2016) and the Hector Preis in 2019.
About the Editor
Anthony Downey is Professor of Visual Culture in the Middle East and North Africa (Birmingham City University). He is currently affiliated with several research projects exploring the politics of global contemporary art practices; digital media and image production; knowledge production and visual culture; and how cultural practices relate to migration and human rights across the Global South. In 2019, he received an AHRC Network+ award (in his capacity as a co-investigator) to develop research on disability education and visual culture in the West Bank and Lebanon.
About the publisher
Koenig Books is an imprint of Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König (VWKG) which was founded in 1968 in Köln/New York by Walther and Kasper König. Since 1980 Walther König is the sole publisher of VWKG, which specialises in artists’ books and artist led catalogues. With an estimated 2,500 titles, they publish mainly on modern and contemporary art, photography, architecture and aesthetic theory.
