Masar Sohail ^(IQ/DK)

Masar Sohail (1982) is a Danish-Iraqi visual artist and filmmaker based in Copenhagen.
He graduated from the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in 2009. His art films have
been screened at venues such as Kunsthalle Mannheim (DE), ARKEN (DK), Øregaard
Museum (DK), the 13th Dubai International Film Festival (AE) and Göteborg Film Festival
(SE). In 2018, Sohail’s work The Republic of Tony Montana (2016) was exhibited at
Kunstmuseum Bonn (DE) where it won the Dorothea von Stetten Art Award. In 2020 his
work was aquired by The National Gallery of Denmark and is now in their permanent
collection.

Masar Sohail works with video, painting and graphics to address issues of identity and
alienation. He often focuses on social, cultural and ideological communities, versus
religion and nature. Using film and video as his primary media, he challenges dominant
political discourses in an effort to suspend the rigid and alienating positions we create
when we categorize each other. His works often have elements of humor and satire and
challenge the relationship between fiction and reality. They also draw on familiar elements
of popular culture and subcultures and mirror the film industry’s representation of
masculinity, power and desire.