HOME: Conversations with Ourselves

Kim Khaira (Milwaukee, WI, USA) in conversation with Komeil Zarin (Malaysia) on May 20, 2020.

Special thanks to Eric Kleppe-Montenegro

As part of our virtual HOME 2020 work, we are interviewing refugees that have resettled to the United States, including both friends and family that are based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as well as those that remain overseas. These interviews are reflections of relationships and conversations that we continue to have long after resettlement; they explore issues that our refugee friends and family members continue to face as they remain in their country of origin or interim country.

About Kim Khaira
Kim M Khaira is a community worker and artist based in Milwaukee from Penang, Malaysia, whose current work draws on the sense of home, creating home, and of making "sense" of the literal and abstract. She is exploring these themes in Pulang Balik: I Am Going Home Too, her residency project at Lynden. Alongside Rohingya refugee leader Hasinah Begum, they visualized HOME at Lynden in 2019 as they were building their homes and community in Milwaukee. Alongside Iranian artist Komeil Zarin, as friends, they have conversations with each other about all the doing and all the artwork that needs to be done in the world.

About Komeil Zarin
Komeil Zarin, an Iranian-born artist, began his artistic journey as a young child painting alongside his father, Mohammad Yousefi Zarin, a painter, Persian calligrapher, and musician. Since then he has continually explored words, music, mediums, and styles in his search for deeper connections – with himself as well as with others.

As one who is exiled yet forever connected to his homeland, waiting here yet always looking beyond, Komeil's work questions our perceived notions of identity, belonging, boundaries, and realities. For Komeil, beyond relationships that are formed with people, there exist relationships with Knowledge, with Time, and with Nature. Komeil’s paintings are a result of his investigations within these realms. Through what is ordinary, Komeil strives to see deeper into the world, in order to find what it means to be.

Learn more about Komeil Zarin's work here:
facebook.com/komeilyousefi.art
https://www.facebook.com/KomeilArtClass

Learn more about the project of Komeil's friend and photographer, Amin Kamrani,"20/20 Photo Collection." Twenty-five percent of the proceeds from this project are shared with underprivileged families who have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic in Malaysia: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ojm-FcUJqO0MRCiQC1HBskTMNTbJvbUl/view?fbclid=IwAR0zqrt3YSQeZMglhx5iddRaYAcbPlbONAvFaiqFVYLUpIu0HL1JH9p-e2w