Forbidden no more

In pants nearly as wide at the ankle as a downtown sidewalk, Bistyek cuts a striking silhouette on his daily marches through the Exchange District, an area the painter has [...]

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After four weeks, your payment will increase to $24.95 plus GST every four weeks. In pants nearly as wide at the ankle as a downtown sidewalk, Bistyek cuts a striking silhouette on his daily marches through the Exchange District, an area the painter has made his muse since arriving in Winnipeg nine years ago. He likes it here, loves it even, but as he’s established himself as one of the city’s most vibrant visual artists — with a street-honed style that pays homage to both Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and graffiti-inspired American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat — Bistyek won’t forget where he came from: he can’t.

Though the 30-year-old has built an enviable life here, he’s eminently aware that his circumstances are defined as much by sheer luck as they are by determination or talent. When he was growing up in Afrin, a village in Syria, his family was torn apart by civil war and discrimination against the Kurdish minority under the rule of dictator Bashar al Assad. “I was living in Lebanon as a refugee for seven years, with a big group of friends, but day after day they started to cross the sea from Turkey or Greece.

Some of them made it, some of them did not,” says the artist born Ormeya Zagros. “I turned to Mom and said, ‘I want to go across the sea. I cannot stay here.

I don’t see a future here. I don’t see opportunities. There is so much discrimination and racism.

I cannot build a life.’” A United Nations sponsorship allowed for Bistyek, his mother and one of his brothers to make a safer passage, migrating to Winnipeg in 2017 and leaving most of the family behind, strewn throughout refugee camps in Northern Africa and the Middle East. Upon his arrival in Canada, Bistyek worked with resettlement services for Kurdish youth and eventually found work as a Starbucks barista.

But before long, inspiration struck: he quit his job and began painting at an astounding rate, plugging away on vivid memory paintings of war, family and a distant childhood disordered by conflict. Self-taught as an artist in his youth by using castoff materials such as cardboard or discarded containers, Bistyek for the first time had access to canvases and new material: at gallery shows in both Winnipeg and Toronto, his works sold in the thousands to collectors and newfound patrons. Of course, the artist put some of the proceeds toward his living expenses and his expansive practice, which includes clothing design and furniture-making, but Bistyek’s ultimate goal couldn’t be contained within any mural or inside any frame: he was motivated to reunite his family.

His first exhibition in Winnipeg enabled Bistyek to sponsor the safe arrival in 2023 of his brother Basil, who’d been living in a refugee camp in Iraq; the festivities at the James Armstrong Richardson International Airport went well beyond the standard hug and kiss, as dozens of members of the local Kurdish community sang, danced and drummed with bouquets of roses twirling near baggage claim. The work continued, and earlier this summer, Bistyek was able to sponsor the immigration of his older brother, his sister-in-law and their four children; the artist hadn’t seen his brother since 2012.

The artist was able to show how far they’d come, bringing his family to the Winnipeg Art Gallery, which is hosting his solo exhibition, Forbidden Colours, through August. “They were very happy. My mother — over the moon,” he says.

“I’ve definitely seen some tears in their eyes.” The exhibition, like the lion’s share of Bistyek’s visual practice, is grounded in experiences of forced motion and suppressed expression under the boot of a totalitarian regime. The show’s title makes