Wafer Shayota

STATEMENT

My name is Wafer Shayota. Throughout a fifty years of painting and other mediums, my art visually depicts human emotions, world catastrophes and wars. Expressing out my unconscious mind through visual language, whether in surrealist manner or abstract form ,capturing emotions that are personal but yet universal. Figures, forms are important but so are colors. The paint never flat or passively applied, neither are figures or forms frozen; together they form a continuous energy.

BIO

Wafer Shayota was born in 1959 in Nineveh,
Iraq. While studying in Baghdad in the mid
19705, he was immersed in the ideas and
projections of Arab nationalism, which were
later reinforced in Egypt where he resided
for two years. After moving to Egypt in 1978,
Shayota exhibited with fellow Iraqi artists
who had established an artistic community.
During the late 1980s and early gos, after
immigrating to the United States, Shayota
once again found an artistic community of
émigrés, comprised of Arab and Chaldean
artists residing in the Metropolitan Detroit
area. He received an MFA from Wayne State
University in 1995 and, most recently, was a
teacher within the Detroit school system.

EXHIBITIONS/SHOWS/COMMISSIONS

2015 -Ten, Arab American Museum, Dearborn, Michigan. 2012 -Iraqi Chaldean Art,Greater Flint Gallery, Flint, Michigan. 2000 -Our Light, Southfield Manor, Southfield. Michigan. 1995 -One Nation Under Groove, Michigan Gallery, Detroit, Michigan. 1980 -Fenoon , Zamalik Gallery, Cairo, Egypt.

EDUCATION

1995 Wayne State University, Detroit, Master of Fine Arts In Painting.
1990 Wayne State University, Detroit, Bachelor of Fine Arts.
1978 Baghdad Institute Of Technology, Credits In Surveying.

TAGS

abstract artist, Michigan artist, Detroit abstract paintings, surreal oil paintings, ceramics