Mostafa Azimitabar was desperate for distraction while on Manus Island and denied art supplies, out of fears he would self-harm. So he used what he had.
Sitting in insufferable heat, in a dirty tent filled with 50 men living in bunk beds, Kurdish refugee Mostafa Azimitabar was desperate for distraction and tranquillity. He’s living in an immigration detention camp on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.
“I poured the instant coffee in hot water, then just plonked the toothbrush in the coffee and I dragged it on a small piece of paper – this is a mountain, this the sun, these are the trees.”That was the beginning of an extraordinary art practice that has seen Azimitabar, who spent more than eight years in detention, short-listed in the Archibald and Sulman Prizes for paintings created using a toothbrush.
“I chose him this year because he is a close friend of mine and he is an amazing artist. Also, most importantly, he cares deeply about human rights,” Azimitabar says.“It’s like three-dimensional,” he says. “When I look at it, I can’t look anywhere else. His story – and that of fellow refugee Farhad Bandesh, who he met at the camp – is told in Angus McDonald’s filmAzimitabar, held at the Mantra Hotel in Preston in 2020.After six years on Manus, Azimitabar was medevaced to Australia for emergency psychiatric treatment, only to be held in what he describes as an even worse prison: hotel detention in Melbourne. He lived in a room on the third floor. His window faced a concrete wall. He was allowed only one hour of fresh air a day.
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