Rushdi Anwar was born in Halabja, Kurdistan (Kurdistan-Iraq). His work reflects on the socio-political issues that continue to mire West Asia’s geopolitics (historically known as ‘The Middle East’). Drawing on his personal experiences of displacement, conflict, and trauma endured under Iraq’s colonial and ideological regimes, Anwar’s art references and generates discourse concerning the status of social equity—exploring its political, social, and religious complexity via study of form and its materiality. Embracing installation, sculpture, painting, photography, and video, his practice recalls the everyday plight of the thousands displaced currently suffering discrimination and persecution, questioning the possibility of redemption and collective necessity to attend with empathy as a social imperative.

Rushdi earned his Ph.D. in Art from RMIT University, Melbourne, and is currently a Senior Lecturer in, the Painting Division, Faculty of Fine Arts at Chiang Mai University, Thailand.

He has held solo and group exhibitions in Australia, Austria, Bulgaria, Canada, China, Cuba, Finland, France, Japan, Kurdistan, Norway, South Korea, Switzerland, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, USA, and Vietnam. Rushdi is one of six artists shortlisted for the Artes Mundi Biennial Prize, Cardiff, UK, 2023; notable recent exhibitions include ‘Sharjah Biennial 15: Thinking Historically in the Present’, Sharjah, 2023; ‘Art in Conflict’, Australian War Memorial touring exhibition, various venues, Australia, 2022-24; ‘wHole,’ Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne, 2022; ‘Now’, Esta Gallery at The Culture Factory, Sulaymaniyah, 2022; ‘The Tides of the Century’, Ocean Flower Island Museum, Danzhou, 2021; ‘Escape Routes: Bangkok Art Biennale’, Bangkok, 2020. He is currently lives between Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Melbourne, Australia.

(Source – the artist’s website 2025)