It is a portrait with somewhat dark tones that reveals the face of a man. Thick eyebrows, black beard and mustaches, staring into space. This man is Mostafa Azimitabar, whom his friends call Moz Azimi. This Kurdish refugee spent eight years in detention in a camp for irregular migrants. Difficult to do more isolated, on the island of Manus, in Papua New Guinea, 2,000 kilometers from the Australian north coast.
In 2013, Moz Azimi fled his country, Iran and repression by boat. He arrives in Australia but finds himself a victim of the very harsh immigration policy, trapped by the heavy Australian bureaucracy. For eight years, the young man who thought he would find a land of welcome alternated between detention centers and sordid hotels for refugees. His daily life is marked by violence, sometimes murders like that of his closest friend in 2014. Deprivation, lack of food and medicine, power cuts, running water… To forget his daily life, to overcome his boredom, Moz Azimi took refuge in writing songs and poems. And then the idea of painting comes to him. But there is no question for his jailers to provide him with equipment, they fear that he will swallow the brushes or the paint to self-harm.
Moz Azimi has an idea: he gets a cup of coffee and a toothbrush. Dipped in coffee, then slipped on the sheet, the toothbrush gives birth to drawings, paintings. “When I paint, I no longer feel any trauma” says Moz Azimi who, for eight years, draws the landscapes of which he is now deprived: the mountains, the houses, the inhabitants of the countryside and then therefore, his self-portrait which he baptizes “KNS088”, his registration number during his long detention on the island of Manus. The Kurd wanted to convey in his work, he says, his feelings as a refugee, “suffering, sadness” but also “strength”.
After 2,737 days in detention, Moz Azimi was released in January 2021. Free, with an Australian visa. Since then, he has rebuilt his life and works for a charity organization. He also mobilized for the other refugees and asylum seekers at the Park Hotel in Melbourne. It was in this hotel that tennis player Novak Djokovic spent a few days at the start of the year after entering Australia without being vaccinated against Covid-19. Moz Azimi will find out at the end of the week if he wins the Archibald Prize, Australia’s most prestigious painting prize. The one who arrived empty-handed eight years ago would then pocket 100,000 Australian dollars, around 70,000 euros, enough to finally start his new life…