Afghan painter has made this a rule for his students

On November 13 Kyiv Palace of Children and Young People hosted the opening of the My Motherland, Afghanistan, painting exhibition by the Afghan refugee Khamid Kabulli. In the author’s words, the presentation organized by the Adventist Development and Relief Agency International (ADRA) with the assistance of the UN High Commissioner on Refugees is aimed at reminding people of those who still perish on the Afghani land and suffer hopeless poverty.

Mr. Kabulli chose a way untraditional for most of his Muslim compatriots, graduating from Kyiv Academy of Arts and working for a time at the Chyhyryn-based Bohdan Khmelnytsky Museum. Now he is a head of an art studio at the Kyiv Center to Support the Family.

The works represented at the exhibition, which have been created by the master during his ten years in Ukraine, are characterized by a certain Eastern impulsiveness. Part of them are idyllic sketches of Afghan daily life: that is how the author hopes to see his motherland one day. Only a few paintings depict recent events in Afghanistan or the author’s memories of the war he himself witnessed.

It is significant that the works by Kabulli’s students also displayed at the exhibition do not deal with war topics at all. According to the author, there is an unspoken rule among his pupils: fix on paper only positive emotion; don’t paint the war.