The art that made me: Mostafa Azimitabar

‘It doesn’t challenge with anger,’ says Mostafa Azimitabar of his most beloved artwork experienced at the Art Gallery, Mike Hewson’s The Key’s Under the Mat (pictured above). ‘I don’t believe in hate. I don’t like hate. I just think if there is a challenge, it should be through spirit, through love, through kindness, and this place is full of energy and love and kindness. I can talk about this forever!’

Azimitabar is a many-time finalist in the Archibald and Sulman prizes. A Kurdish refugee from Iran, Azimitabar was held in Australian immigration detention on Manus Island for six and a half years and then in the solitary confines of a Melbourne immigration detention hotel for 15 months, before being released in 2021 on a temporary visa. With his requests for paint and brushes refused by guards on Manus Island, Azimitabar chose to use what was immediately at hand: black instant coffee, a toothbrush and the reverse side of the request and complaint forms given to detainees.

‘Whenever I put the toothbrush into a cup of instant coffee, I felt they cannot take it from me. It was something I wanted to keep for myself,’ says Azimitabar. ‘You don’t have anything, but you have a kind of brush – it’s a toothbrush, but it’s my brush in this time. And that helped me a lot to not think about fences and wires, handcuffs, security, yelling – and it was different. Everything was white in the place. I was locked up and everything was white. So, when I was using coffee, I felt it was my colour.’