ABSTRACT EXPRESSION: Processing Grief – Ilos Ilyas Elias Kirkan

Coming from a traditional family, becoming an artist was never seen as a legitimate path – it simply wasn’t considered a “real” profession. Growing up in an illiterate family environment where studying wasn’t even valued, I managed being the first one in the whole extended family who actually finished primary, secondary and high school as well as college and university in Denmark.

My upbringing exposed me to a great mixture of cultures, religions, languages and differences. I was constantly in a dilemma and experienced plenty of chaos during my childhood as creativity was valued in its place, perhaps as a hobby or a hidden talent, but not as something to pursue seriously. So for much of my early life, the idea of studying art, let alone making it a career, didn’t even occur to me.

It really felt too far removed from the world I came from, too uncertain, too unspoken.
But life has a way of pushing you to confront the things you’ve buried or forgotten.
When someone close to you dies, something shifts in the way you think, in your being really.

In my case both my oldest sister and her husband died in a traffic accident on holidays in Turkey. Sadly I couldn’t go to the funeral due to being born in Turkey, as military service wasn’t an option for me. I couldn’t face fighting nor support the war against my own people.

You’re forced to sit with silence, to face questions you might otherwise avoid: How do I want to live? What really matters? What am I here to do? That kind of loss cracks things open. It strips away the surface and demands something more raw and honest from you.

In that quiet reckoning, I found myself returning to art – not as an idea or ambition, but as a necessity. It became my preferred language, the most authentic way for me to process grief, to express what I couldn’t say out loud, and to begin living more truthfully.

Ilos Ilyas Elias Kirkan is a conceptual Danish-Kurdish artist and Mental Ideas ambassador.

https://www.instagram.com/kirkanart