Dr. Azad Hama Shekhany, Head of Architecture Engineering Department, Tishk International University, won the best prize for 2019 in an international web-based artistic competition called “Red Line Art Works” among thousands of artists from 40 countries.

The red line artwork promotes artists who can be the most inspiring and eloquent voices of their generation, of their communities, and the voices and powerless everywhere.

Redline artwork promotes art which focuses on big global issues, big global concerns, big injustices and the problems which these are causing around the world.

On 10th of March 2019, Dr. Azad was invited to the UK to receive the prize awards and the ceremony took place on March 17, 2019, in the presence of local press from Brighton, artists, British and Kurdish local communities.

The winner painting called “The ship of Diversity”, which represents and reflects the many people now in “adrift” in the word. Refugees from the south of the globe, are facing the drama of displacement because of the internal war, ISIS wars or as a result of the problems caused by climate change in our planet. People are often forced to leave their country and hope to settle in a safe land in Western countries. As people in the western countries are nowadays not very much welcoming the refugees and this often leads to the rise of extremist parties who troubles the security of the hosting countries.

This painting tries to give an answer to the current state of the Middle East that faces many of refugees in the word and the responsibilities of Western governments in creating and sustaining those problems. The ship of diversity is the gathering and homeland for refugees who are not warmly welcomed by the western countries and therefore try to inhabit in this ship nearby and with the protection of western countries.

Dr. Azad is Kurdish and he and his family have been displaced from Kurdistan by the violence of the Islamic State (ISIS) and the other parties to the conflicts in Syria and Iraq. Dr. Azad currently lives between Kurdistan, Italy, and the UK. He is the Head of Architecture Dept. at Tishk International University, also was a Lecturer in Architectural College at Venice University and was the Dean of Engineering Faculty in Sulaimani Polytechnic University. His artworks reflect the traumas of displacement, he is now divided his life with the fractured lives of scores of millions of other displaced people across the world.