This Being Human Transcript

Episode 9 – Kevork Mourad

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

My name is Abdul-Rehman Malik and I’m canvassing the world for the most interesting people, to hear about their journeys, their work, and what it means to be alive in the world today. And perhaps nobody has captured that experience of being alive, better than the 13th-century Persian poet and Sufi mystic Jalaluddin Rumi in his poem “The Guest House.” 

FEMALE VOICE: 

This Being Human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

So welcome to This Being Human. A podcast inspired by Rumi’s words and motivated by all those who carry that message forward in the world today. Today, artist Kevork Mourad.

KEVORK MOURAD: 

This being human means to me we are layers of experiences. Do not underestimate any human being when you meet on the street, regardless if they are street sweepers, regardless if they're doctors or engineers or a refugee that you meet, every single person is a person. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

To call Kevork a visual artist would fail to capture the unique nature of what he does. Yes, he puts lines on a page, creating striking drawings and animations. But he’s also a dynamic performer, who collaborates with musicians to create works of art in front of live audiences, his movements blending seamlessly with the sound of the music. The results are stunning and the process is captivating to watch. 

Born in Syria, of Armenian descent, Kevork’s work has been commissioned all over the world. His collaborators include some of the most celebrated names in classical music, such as cellist Yo-Yo Ma, American violist Kim Kashkashian and renowned orchestras like the Los Angeles Master Chorale. 

I spoke with Kevork about how he blends his eyes, ears, and artistic hand to the sounds of the world around him, whether it's in front of a live audience, or in his studio in New York. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Kevork Mourad, I'm so happy to have you join us on This Being Human. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

My pleasure. Thank you so much, Abdul-Rehman. This is fantastic. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

Kevork, I want to begin by asking you to take us to one of your most memorable performances. And I would like you to take us to that moment just before the performance is about to begin. How are you feeling? What's going through your mind? What energy is flowing through you as you as you head into it? 

KEVORK MOURAD:

So I have two experiences. The first one is the performance of Home Within. Home Within is a collaboration with an amazing clarinetist-composer and a friend, Kinan Azmeh.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

The piece begins with the clarinetist alone in a spotlight. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

We wanted to kind of document what was happening in Syria and, at the same time, to support the refugees in any ways we can — you know, financially with contribution in our work, and also emotionally and ideas-wise to show the world that what's happening in that part of the world.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Soon, haunting blank faces appear on the screen behind Kinan, their hands raised. Later, we see Kevork onstage, drawing — his work projected on the screen. We alternate between the live drawings and animation. Ancient cities, warriors on horseback, tortured souls… There’s a sense of turmoil to all of it.

KEVORK MOURAD: 

So when we were in Lebanon, we got invited to perform in Beirut. And we all know Lebanon has the largest Syrian refugees in the world. It's-its crazy. It's probably like the quarter population of Lebanon is Syrian. I don't know why I never thought that the audience could be fully Syrian there. We created this work, inspired and wanted to share the story of our friends and family from Syria, and they were there. They wanted the, heartwarming and the moment where they could kind of feel the sigh, “ah, this is it”. So that performance — at the end of that performance, when we finished the last frame, where Kinan is playing his clarinet.. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

In this moment, Kinan is standing sideways, his dark profile against the white screen. Drawings appear to be rising out of his clarinet and spreading across the stage. Houses first, then a growing city. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

And from the clarinet, you see the city's getting rebuilt, which is the future that we're hoping, that the country gets rebuilt. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

We left and we went to the green room. I was in tears. You know, sometimes we don't know why we're that moved. And then I saw Kinan and he was also in tears. We hugged each other without telling why. And it was magical moment where we feel like the art has that room, and needs to be expressive because people are dire to get that. That was one experience. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

The second one, the commission that I got from the Master Chorale in Los Angeles, they wanted me to create this masterwork by Handel. Visuals — like that piece is written, I think, two hundred and fifty years ago. And it's the — it's about the Exodus. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

It's the first refugee crisis three thousand years ago, where Israelites forced to to leave Egypt. And I'm not a religious person, but I'm spiritual. So it means when this came to me, I said this this commission, it's not coincidence, not a coincidence, because first of all, the crisis in Syria, 

the refugee crisis are big. And my ancestors were forced to leave their homes from historic Armenia, which is Turkey today, to Syria. That's how I ended up growing up in Syria. So can I put those three things together? Three-thousand-year-old story, one hundred and some year old story of my ancestors, and today's story, together in one piece. And when I created that work and I was with 80 singers and I was planted between them. So behind me, the chorus. In front of me are the musicians. So the chorus is, like, maybe 50 centimeters behind me when they're singing, their breath is hitting my back and I'm getting goosebumps without even starting. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Wow. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

So this is a masterpiece, Handel's Israel in Egypt, which kind of depicts this Exodus story. And when I asked the conductor, I said, is it possible the singers could kind of interact and move, be part of — he's like: “absolutely we’ll do whatever you ask for because we need to support the piece. We need to make the piece complete”. And that moment was so special and it was so elaborate. I've never done a large work like this where the live orchestra is kind of part of the work. I'm drawing live, I should not kind of carry away from the piece, I need to be in the piece, and meanwhile I have the technology, I have the foot controller. And at the end, when I'm done, there's like two thousand five hundred people that are watching there. I leave. So it's like I finished the work, I’m going to wait in the green screen — green room, sorry. I see the conductor had this big glass of beer. He's like, you deserve this. It's like – magic! And it's just beautiful to see all this, this, this moment where it just shapes you as a kind of a creative person about the next journey. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

I remember the first time that I saw your work. I was shown it by a curator. He says you should watch this video evidence and testimony to the work of this artist named Kevork Mourad. It was intense and it was mesmerizing. And I couldn't help but want to be fully present in that moment 

to witness what you were doing. And I look forward to Inshallah the time that — that I can have the privilege of seeing you in the flow that you've just talked about. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

Inshallah. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

I also thought to myself at that moment, how vulnerable must this artist feel? When you are evolving your work in real time in front of an audience, how do you engage with that risk or that vulnerability? 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

I think every time you do anything live has risk. And the risk factor, actually could be positive because you have the adrenaline rush and you are trying to tell a story. So it's kind of almost like you're weaving a carpet with two different mediums, sound and image. So once you create that thread, you're moving forward. It has to kind of, at the end, tell or say why this performance is happening. It is vulnerable. I have a software in the computer that kind of stores the pre-made stuff in. So if I'm creating a performance, 50 percent is created previously, because if I'm, let's say, I'm creating a figure, sometimes if I want this figure to move, that movement, it should be done previously. So the interesting thing about my live performances, what I'm creating live is very fast. Whatever it's moving, it takes months to create. So this one dancer, it takes like two months for me to — because everything is hand drawn. I get thousands of drawings. I put them together, but I release them in 20 seconds. But sometimes I draw in 20 seconds and then 20 second — one took two and a half months, one took 20 seconds. So combine them together. So pre-made is stored in the computer. I have a MIDI controller on my foot. It changes the channel between live camera to the computer.

So all this is, if anything goes wrong in technology, you're vulnerable. Of course! So you're like continuously, your heart is beating. Continuously you're, like, on the edge. But that's kind of — it transforms the work and the work becomes more exciting because, as you said, you witnessed 

that video. But imagine if you witnessed it live. And sometimes the paint clogs, sometimes the paint explodes on the paper. It's just like — everything could happen. But so you're kind of in battle to create until the last second, something interesting. And that is the beauty and the fun of live performance. And I don't regret it. I love every second of it.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

What it feels that you're doing is you're telling a story. And I wonder, what is it about the power of a story through visual art that really sparks you? 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

It's a great, great question. When my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, arrived to Syria, he's an orphan with his brother. Two orphaned brothers arrived. They were forced to leave their homes. They arrived to Syria and they settled in the border with Turkey, northeast part of it's heavily populated by Kurdish minority there. Armenian- he wanted to learn the Kurdish language. He learned Kurdish and he was musical. He started playing tanbur. He played this instrument and he created beautiful songs in Kurdish. And he shared it with the Kurdish 

community. And he went to the Kurdish wedding and he played there and he became —his nickname became “tanbur-ban”. “Tanbur-ban” it means, like, the master of tanbur. Every time I remember growing up when I heard him playing, he gave me such a beautiful inspiration and I think he's the one who kind of planted the seed of storytelling. Because he told his own story through other cultures’ language and rhythm. He wanted to kind of capture the land’s story and give it to the next generations without even thinking about his fame. He refused to record himself. He refused to share his — his work as fame. He just wanted to capture that moment. 

And yes, I believe that the most powerful way to tell art is to tell a story, because if we tell the story of our ancestors in any way you can, the future generations, they kind of understand where they come from. If we don't know our past, we will not know our future, where we're going. My grandfather gave me the sense of the rhythm and the music. If I had parents that were kind of supportive of art and culture, I'm sure I would have gone to the music direction. But to draw is much easier if you just take a piece of paper and just occupy yourself. But whenever I heard the music, it, lines used to kind-of change and curve based on the music. And I think the very first time when I acknowledged that the drawing could be my way of storytelling — when I was in Armenia, I just graduated the art school there and I was invited to take part in the first Biennale and I collaborated with a good friend, he's a trombonist. He came from America to learn about the culture, Armenian music and all that. Together we decided to influence, to support each other. So without me preparing anything, without him preparing anything, we created this kind of bond between the two mediums and I felt the beginning of something interesting, so that was in 1997.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Kevork was born in Aleppo, Syria. He grew up in a working-class neighbourhood called Nor Gyugh, meaning New Village. Many Armenians settled there in 1915 after fleeing the genocide in Turkey and the surrounding regions. The city’s rich mix of cultures and faiths would come to have a huge impact on Kevork’s worldview, and his artistic practice. 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

We used to walk in this old neighborhood. And there you can see, one side is the mosque; the other side you see the Roman Christian and Assyrian and the Armenian. They're all built on top of each other. It's like one thing because, it's all like you're walking in this narrow street. That's kind of carved in my memory, all these beautiful layers of history, which is kind of part of our kind of weekend journey. And those all seeped into my work. And on top of it, of course, the music and the sound and the old architecture, like, iron works of the windows. And we never even kind of felt the difference between any faith, any background. They're all kind of part of each other's life without even thinking, “oh, this person is from that neighborhood, this person's at that neighborhood”. We never felt the difference between their citizens. And I thought that's going to stay there forever. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK:

What does it mean to be an Armenian and and what are kind of the lessons, the experiences, the stories of your own Armenian heritage, which drive this desire for collaboration and connection and beauty? 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

Being an Armenian on one hand is a blessing, on the other hand, is a curse, because as probably you heard or you read, they moved and they spread all over the world. I don't know why, but I feel like they continuously want to feel somewhere safe. So to talk about my ancestors, I think that would be a great, great way to emphasize what did that mean to be Armenian. So when they arrived to Syria, we were the first refugees there. We arrived there as a refugee and the Syrian people, they opened their arms. We got what we want. We- we kept our language. We kept our faith. To come barehanded to a place and to build everything from scratch and to have this wealth of a culture in Syria — it's a very unique thing that is another reason where I kind of, always go back and draw from my memories from there to put that in my works, because it's important for the world to know that. The refugee crisis is not about now. It's been the way my ancestors arrived and they started creating beautiful things from the carpet to jewelry, to, you know, pots and maybe, you know, Zildjian, the Zildjian, the cymbals. It's so much wealth to contribute to society. And that doesn't happen alone. It happens collaboratively. So if we didn't have the opportunity to flourish in Syria and to grow, I don't think we would have been where we are now. 

What's important for me, we kept our culture, we kept our language, our faith and everything else. Plus, we were so fortunate to learn about the local traditions, the local language, to learn Arabic. We even learned the remote languages, like I learned Turkish, I learned Kurdish. So this is amount of wealth that we, as a part of the curse, which we happen to be, you know, refugees and forced to live in a different land, we took that all as a wealth and shaped us, who we are.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Kevork moved to Armenia later in life, to get his MFA at the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts. But it didn’t exactly feel like a homecoming. 

KEVORK MOURAD:

There's something important for me to explain. Armenia has two different sides. West and East. Western Armenians are the diaspora Armenians. The Armenians were, like, spread all over the world after the genocide. The eastern one, kind of, they were there. They became, at the beginning, part of the Soviet. And there's two different kind of dialects between them. So for us, we’ve never been... I never grew up in Armenia, I grew up in Syria. So to go to Armenia, even though it's Armenian, you don't kind of become part of the fabric right away. The languages is a bit different. It takes you like a couple of months to understand fully. But what was hard — and it's still hard — this idea of, “I grew up in Syria, I'm not a hundred percent Syrian because I happen to be Armenian. I grew up, I go to Armenia, I'm not 100 percent Armenian because I'm from [the] Diaspora”. So this idea of not being from one place, again, it's like a curse. But it could also be a blessing where you don't know if you need to be part of one place to be able to speak about different cultures and different people. I think I look at it ... I'm an optimistic person. I look at it from the bright side. And I think that, give it to me, I'll create more out of it.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

When Kevork was searching for his artistic voice, he saw art as a Western thing. He had learned about great American artists and he aspired to be like them. So at first, he didn’t take stock of the rich art and culture that he had been immersed in since childhood.

KEVORK MOURAD: 

Growing up in Aleppo, it was a very unique experience in a way that subconsciously many things kind of carve into your memory. You're — without your thinking, you're gaining all this visual knowledge and sonic knowledge. You're just like getting it all. But in the meantime, I was always looking outside far away to the West. For me, art is in the West. For me, art is outside, rejecting many of the local information and visual information. And whatever I witnessed there, I wasn't thinking that is going to be my future. But subconsciously it was all, you know, I was just taking it and taking it. So when I arrived to America, I wanted to contribute to the American culture in a way through my art. But I thought if I'm going to be the next William de Kooning or the Jackson Pollock is the one, but with a little bit of time, you realize that they did it. It's done. The most important thing is to concentrate and look in your roots and to see if you could bring from your culture to the local people. So this local people, they could understand what was there, what's out there. So slowly, slowly, I realized what I gained from my knowledge and memories from Aleppo. It seeped in, it just like came to my work. And I welcome that because I realized the unique experience is much more powerful than this bigger picture, like American expressionist or like a painting, that painterly paint. No, the truly art enthusiast, they want the unique and the “individual voice”. Once you have that individual voice, it becomes clearer that you could say things in a minimal way and the effect is maximum.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

In 2011, following the Arab Spring, Syria was the site of a brutal civil war. A four-year long battle took place in Kevork’s hometown of Aleppo. Civilians were targeted, as well as hospitals and schools. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, and millions displaced, creating one of the largest refugee crises in recent history. 

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

And how have you come to terms with the tragedy in Syria, the unrest there, the- the civil conflict there? How has that shaped you as an...as an artist? 

KEVORK MOURAD: 

The conflict in Syria had a huge impact on my works in a way that I used to paint lots of colorful paintings in-studio. The performance has always been black and white because, when I create work, it's not about finished work. It is just about being practical that the line should be either white on black paper or black on white paper. But in — the studio is always experimenting with colors and colors and canvas. But once that tragedy hit Syria, I wanted to kind-of document, almost like I'm writing my own diary, to put my feelings in this diary. So my work became black 

and white. The colors kind of diminished from the works in a way that … I'm not creating a work to kind of decorate other people's walls. I want to create work where, in the work, has the voice of people, voice of suffering, voice of the local people who, once upon a time, they welcomed us there. They made us to feel in our home, to feel welcome. And that was very important for me. It's important for me to show the world that I want to return the kindness of the Syrian people to ...who gave us when we arrived there a hundred-some years ago. And I'm not shy about it. I talk about it loudly. I'm not sure many nationalist Armenians love that, but I don't think I can ignore that. So the tragedy affected my work. And it became black and white and I continuously until now, I do a lot of black and white work. And the work behind me is one of one of those works. This is done… 2016.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

Kevork gestures to a drawing on the wall behind him. It’s a large, chaotic scene of a city. In the background are buildings — some standing, some falling, some that almost seem to be disappearing. In the foreground, textiles, torn and strewn across the page — rising and falling like waves into a massive, messy pile. If you look closely, you can see hands coming out from beneath. Dead or alive — it’s not clear.

KEVORK MOURAD: 

I had a phone conversation with a friend of mine. He's Armenian. He decided to stay behind to be kind of part of survivors and part of the fabric of Aleppo. And when I was speaking with him, he used to go to his work, he’s pharmacist. Some streets, he needed to hide behind the fabric behind this — I don't know if you heard these stories where people collectively put together this 

huge fabric to protect themselves from snipers. They used to go to their work behind the fabric. And I started thinking, if I meet this person, if I meet this friend in the future, how I'm going to look into his eyes ... that I'm very comfortable in my studio creating and he's — with his family, with his two kids — he has to go work in this risky daily threat that he could die at any minute. So I decided to create this piece and I called it Immortal City. That city stood there for thousands of years because of people like him. They protected the city, they protected the culture. People, they decided to tie themselves to the ancient ruins to say that if we don't protect this city, no one is going to protect. And it comes to my mind this saying: “people create place, not the place create people.”

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

And as someone from Syria who is an artist and a cultural producer, what has the experience of witnessing this tragedy been like for you?

KEVORK MOURAD: 

Just before the 9/11 crisis or the 9/11, I saw that the Arabic culture was living the Renaissance. Imagine any kind of newspaper stand, you could see an Arabic newspaper. That was fascinating. I would have seen El Hayat. I would have seen Al Qahera. On the subways, people were reading Arabic newspapers. I could have easily opened a Arabic book and read on the subway. After that, all that disappeared. You don't see that. Until today, I don't see that. It's like almost 20 years, we have not seen that it's returning. And it's very hard to see any Arabic 

cultural things successfully done now because it's very hard to organize anything related to Arabic culture and language, unfortunately.

But personally, I have never stopped. I always wanted to talk about my background, my culture, my two important cultures in me, the Syrian and Armenian. And I don't feel like I was ever forced to change the way I express my own work. So I was very fortunate to never be stopped doing what I'm doing. And of course, we need to do a lot of work to educate the Western audience toward how to perceive the cultural work and piece of artwork and piece of music. It's important, but it's important to not stop, important not to change your work based on other people's judgment, because artwork shouldn't be about fashion. Artwork should be about the truth and history.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Given that you've had so many homes, so many places that you've gone to and found collaboration and community. What does home mean to you now?

KEVORK MOURAD: 

First of all, home is a place where you feel safe, because if you're safe, you're creative. Second, it's very important, when you contribute. So if I'm contributing, if I'm creating things and just giving to the kind of, my contemporaries or the place I live, it means it's safe for me to create. It's safe for me to share. I don't think I can say only one place is home for me. Whenever I'm safe, whenever I feel like I could contribute to that place, it's the best home.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Kevork Mourad, what does this being human mean to you?

KEVORK MOURAD: 

This being human means to me we are layers of experiences. Do not underestimate any human being when you meet on the street, regardless if they are street sweepers, regardless if they're doctors or engineers or a refugee that you meet, every single person is a person. You give them, you receive more than what you give them.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK: 

Thank you so much Kevork for joining me on This Being Human.

KEVORK MOURAD: 

My pleasure, Abdul-Rehman. Hopefully we meet in person on the other side.

ABDUL-REHMAN MALIK VOICEOVER: 

This Being Human is an Antica production. Our senior producer is Pacinthe Mattar. This episode was produced by Ebyan Abdigir and written by Kevin Sexton. Mixing and sound design by Phil Wilson. Original music by Boombox Sound. The Executive Producers are Kathleen Goldhar and Lisa Gabriel. And Stuart Coxe is the president of Antica Productions.

This Being Human is generously supported by the Aga Khan Museum, one of the world’s leading institutions that explores the artistic, intellectual, and scientific heritage of Islamic civilizations around the world. For more information about the museum go to www.agakhanmuseum.org.

The Museum wishes to thank Nadir and Shabin Mohamed for their philanthropic support to develop and produce This Being Human.

Kevork Mourad is an Armenian-Syrian artist who collaborates with musicians, creating visual art in front of live audiences. He has worked with some of the most celebrated performers in classical music including Yo-Yo Ma, violist Kim Kashkashian and the Los Angeles Master Chorale. He talks about growing up as an Armenian in Syria, developing his unique practice, the thrill of creating art in front of a crowd, and how war has changed the way he paints.