Tishk Barzanji

0:04[Applause]

0:11hi everyone so my name is Tishk Barzanji and I'm an artist and illustrator so I'm going to talk about the journey I've had because kind of unusual because most people.

0:25That's been here has had a structure to get here and my has been very unpredictable so I came here as a refugee and from Kurdistan at the age of 8 so I'm just going to show you some other stuff I done so I actually wasn't gonna make art at all I studied physics and Loughborough University so I was adamant to work in at NASA something unusual happened in 2014 and I became really ill and I had this thing called migraine vertigo so my whole pathway kind of just changed by this illness I was indoors for 8 months and the doctors wasn't sure what the illness was but they eventually said his migraine vertigo and this kind of gave me a narrowed my pathway to what I wanted to do in life. And so the doctor used to tell me to actually just take an activity that you enjoy so my initial thought was I was very creative in the past so I started to take photos around London of the some of the places that I enjoyed Brutalism was a big part of the journey because I grew up in his stay in Boston.

2:08So I used to go around feeling really sick just send these as a mission every day to take these photos and people used to come up to me and ask me why I'm taking these like bizarre photos of this the buildings so from then on I ran out of places to take furs off.

2:28So I decided the best way to go is to create my own work and to create my own work I just started to look colors I read a lot about color theory and how they create atmosphere and space so with that being said I spent the last six months of 2015 just looking at how color and different different colors that work together.

2:59And I wanted to apply that to the things I looked at in the past with the Brutalism and I started to apply to the images that I created in the past was just to manipulate these places to show in a bare light so this was still to me was like a therapeutic process it was nothing serious. And I never wanted to show it to anyone it was just for myself you know sometimes I would like post an Instagram and that was it nothing serious so from then on you know.

3:32I started to look at color for you in a more in-depth way so for me like I said I wanted to really create my own world and style but I didn't know how to start that.

3:53So I just basically created each piece with wherever I saw as it was added the colors that you know really was in relation to how I felt so I used to just you know make these pieces and I was just think about how I can use in the future and I was wondering the way that I can always manipulate so I decided to paint these pieces with acrylics at first and I ended up using oil paint so scan each images and then from scanning it I thought the edit these digitally this was the outcome from these projects I did it was just personal pieces working on you know how I feel with these surroundings I take images of so the first one aku that Tree of Life just looking at having you know indoors and out outdoors at the same kind of space when the second piece is good solitude it's kind of just myself you know being in this world I feel really isolated my doctor used to tell me just imagine a door when you feel really bad just that will escape your bad feelings so I use a lot of doors and stairs in my work where you know there will kind of you know show local shows a lot of escapism when I was feeling really bad back in 2015 it was so at this point this was still for me a prefer music process I never thought about being an artist or doing as a career and what happened next was kind of bizarre I had this article come out in 2017 April and it kind of just went you know snowballed from there I would have like hundreds of emails from people just saying to me you know we want to work with you we want to like represent you.

6:02And I had just had to reply to every email and just be like you know.

6:04This is just therapeutic process I'm not you know I'm not artists and you know every you know it was six months of me just trying to think about what I wanted to do and eventually I decided to you know take this on as a career but at the same time I wasn't really sure if it was the way to go so I joined jelly London in January 2018 and the first job I got from that was the film for summer screen that Somerset House which I used to go there often with friends so this was the first year they wanted to work it was an artist to do the visuals and the posters for the film for summer screen they really wanted to have a theme for that year and the theme was fantasy so this is the final piece I made for that which is came out last year film four so this was a collaboration between me film four and Somerset House and it was really interesting you know eventually I got loads of photos from you know people just show me pictures they took around London. And this was kind of the first time where I saw myself as an artist so this was interesting because film four were really you know open to me working with whoever you know my ideas and really surreal pea ideas but at the same time some of the house you know had a law they were saying that a lot of older generation that viewed their work.

7:43So it was all about having that balance to make sure you know everyone's on board so I'm just going to show you the final piece I mean not the final piece but the piece that I always wanted to have as this as the poster but a eventually some of the house didn't agree with ear so this was the piece I wanted to use so a lot of they were just saying it's a bit too complex for the viewers so I just wanted to show that so you can see you know the dough process you know it doesn't always end up how you want and secondly from this point on I had you know a couple of live shows in Taiwan and eventually I wanted to just focus on the people instead of his spaces I just wanted to look at the people within these spaces and how they interact with the you know the situation's they're in and I really you know just ice in the period when I was really ill I spent two years just studying people taking notes and drawings and you know. I was going to a theater of my own just taking drawings of people how they act and had a tool and I actually used this my work right now.

9:07But I don't thing you know I never really spoke about it it's the first time I'm gonna actually had just announced it.

9:13So I kept the identities anonymous because I wanted to people to focus on interactions more than the you know the race so that's why I've kept the identity you know anonymous for the whole most of them you know all of my work that I've been working on.

9:32So this the works you know that came out of it is the series are made for myself so each piece was the moments in my life where you know interactions of ahead of people and the colors in it all I found objects and it's new no the green that's a found object I found in fresno 14 back in 2000 sorry in camden I found this you know on the street and I you know kind of stuck with me and the colors in the lighting the Reds and the oranges or just moments where I've had where the lights have come into my room and friends rooms and just little moments I've kept and I've kind of just boiled together and eventually I carried on the series and just play down with colors and you know situations that I've encountered and this kind of led to warmth in right now.

10:31So I was in Miami in 2018 last year and a friend of mine was just asking me whether I've ever had a show or I've had any like like clients in America and I was just like no I don't really get work in America and at this moment when I my friend was talking about it I looked at my email and either email from Rockefeller from New York it was it was bizarre because at the same time where we were sat Kanye West was approaching us I don't know it was a weird situation.

11:10And so I was thinking about my whole life at a moment and I'm thinking about how he's only been in love once I've been doing all this work and you know everything I've moved so fast and I looked at a brief and I was couldn't enjoyed the holiday anymore because what I was thinking about going home to work on this project.

11:30So they have this big project next to the Empire State Building they call it it's called the Rose Hill it's not finished yet they're still building it is a luxury apartments so they wanted me to just illustrate certain areas of the New York and how you know people interact with it.

11:52And I'm gonna show you some of the pieces are created of those elements so the first piece is this is just a bird it's a really famous library that's in New York and you know just they really wanted to be really surreal so that was something I'm always up for cause I like the real stuff and yes that the second piece is the Gramercy Theatre so they just wanted it and also they wanted the colors to really blend with you know the whole theme of the building which was you know love Navy a lot of bronze so I'm gonna carry on showing the other pieces and this I've never shown these pieces but these are this is the Madison Square Garden you know.

12:37This is the second piece Italy where you can get loads of like nice Italian food this is big supermarket so basically.

12:47This is - I wanted to show you some of the projects I worked on and after apologize I'm gonna have to bring Georgia Smith back into this so Georgia Smith at the moment when I was finished in that project she hit me up and wanted to do some visuals for her live shows so I said yeah why not let's do it. And so I just turned my process of painting scanning and then turned into animation each you know the animation took about eight hours to make 30 seconds so this was her for her live show.

13:26So this is actually gonna be shown at Glastonbury her show is gonna be on Friday so if you want to see I was going to play a part of a clip of it so you can see so that was thank you I wanted to end this with saying I only started this journey at 27 so I'm 29 now.

14:28So I just wanted to say that you can start this at any age and I hope this you know inspires you wherever you are wherever you're doing that you can always make a change and you know.

14:39This is just the beginning for me so thank you for so much for having me here and have a good night [Applause]