Artist Tishk Barzanji Explores Human Tragedy In Psychedelic Architectural Illustrations

Kurdish-British artist Tishk Barzanji creates surreal, architecture-infused illustrations that depict impossible structures and dark domestic scenes, to engage with difficult subject matters. Barzanji began publishing the brightly hued illustrations on his Instagram account in 2016, and has posted more than 100 different designs in this style to date.

“Surrealism helps to connect my ideas and to show a glimpse of my imagination,” Barzanji told Dezeen.

Barzanji uses a diary to record his observations of the public’s interactions with the built environment – citing train stations, theatres and parks as some of the places he visits to make sketches that form the starting point of his work.

“I’m fascinated by how people live, how they communicate, and the way architecture leads the way we use space,” he says.

More: Tishk Barzanji, Instagram, Facebook h/t: dezeen

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The old man is playing symphonic tunes on his saxophone , The sky was so red I couldn’t look at it because it made me sad, swelling tears in my eyes and they dripped quietly on the floor as I got on with my day. I tried to keep my focus, ticked off the to-do list, did my chores. I made breakfast, wrote emails, paid bills and rewrote stories, but the panic kept growing, exploding in my chest. Tears falling on the bed tick tick tick me not making a sound and some days I just don't know what to do. Where to go or who to see and I try to be gentle, soft and kind . It is as if my life were magically run by two electric currents: joyous positive and despairing negative, whichever is running at the moment dominates my life, floods it. – A Song For You

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Jan 28, 2019 at 1:17pm PST

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I didn't plan to stay long. I've never forgotten him. Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares stained with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart. I still cannot understand how he could abandon me so unceremoniously, without any sort of goodbye, without looking back even once. His heart danced upon her movements like a cork upon a tide. He heard what her eyes said to him, from beneath her hair and knew that in some dim past, whether in life or fantasy, he had heard their tale before. Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow – Don't Miss it

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Jan 23, 2019 at 1:28pm PST

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Some part of me knew he would show up, that if I stood in one place long enough he would find me, like you're taught to do when you're lost. But they never taught us what to do if both of you are lost, and you both end up in the same place, waiting. I offer her half of my hit of acid. It's my second or third time tripping, it's her first, and she's understandably trepid. Awake all night, at one point I find her touching her reflection in a cruelly lit motel bathroom, asking if she'll ever be the same. I kiss her then for the first time and whisper, "No, we are transforming". We got her to talk to a psych doctor once, the doctor asked if she heard things other people don't. "Sure, I hear birds in the morning when everyone's sleeping, I hear trees rustling when no one's around. What I was trying to say, maybe, is that I don't know what it is I'm capable of transforming into." – Potion

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Jan 10, 2019 at 2:07pm PST

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PART 3 / Mission / Words by @ed_scissor Lost in the wind. I ain’t slept a wink. I’ve been lost in the wind,  I’ve been making my way, I’ve doing my thing. Crossing the desert for two days. I crossed the desert for two days. By the time I got in through the door of the Inn and ordered a drink, it was too late. Who knows what they're doing in there? Behind the motel door. When they knock, don’t let them in. When they knock, (don’t) let them in. Lost in the fumes of a Pontiac revving.  The crossroads reek of a road race. As the world falls down and the stars break through the night sky I stay all in. All and all, till morning. The weight of the world.  A violent eclipse.  The moon and the sun. And the roads never end, and the sky is on fire, above enchanted springs. The horizon line; an illusionary space, left there till it fades out. Pitch black no street lights, yet I see everything. Burning daylight sees storms brewing, drawn by laws of gravity. Let's swim forever, then sleep forever, us two. When the service is down, across the town, what'll we do? #tishkbarzanji #edscissor

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Jan 2, 2019 at 1:35pm PST

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From the Archive: You are Intriguing Selling Limited edition A1 Glicee Print on Archival Paper / 84cm x 59cm through @returnonart Limited Edition of 50 Check there page to purchase #tishkbarzanji

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Dec 19, 2018 at 1:14pm PST

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PART 1 / Dawn / Words by @ed_scissor The dawn Adorns Your form Forlorn It draws you close you move away revolving doors It takes care of you Take you It dawned upon me Dawn rising Forms writhing Fork lightning Forced Violence Two bodies one hybrid Pour from your poor eyelids Like hydrants No clothes were worn either We’ve been kissing since sundown fluttering eyelids Unaware of the end zones living inside us. #tishkbarzanji

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Dec 17, 2018 at 1:25pm PST

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Off to Art Basel this week so here is my new work for @newscientist – Dark portals – Out now // A real honour, thank you. "WE know it’s out there. It makes up the bulk of matter in the universe and sculpts its grandest architectural features with a hidden gravitational hand. And yet despite a long campaign to unmask it, the mysterious stuff known as dark matter famously continues to hide in the shadows. " – New Scientist

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Dec 3, 2018 at 12:48pm PST

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Some mornings you wake up fully in your body, and you know this is all there is, the air, the shape your body makes in the air, your hand, the skin that covers your hand, the air that covers your skin, the light that fills the air, a few colors in the light, this one thought, this dream dissolving away. This is the dream you need to hold onto, this is your shadow speaking, attempting to bewilder you again. Sometimes, if you lay still, you can feel the air entering each cell, sometimes you can feel the blood in your lips. Sometimes, if you lay very still, you can feel the whole web tremble. – Milestones

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Nov 26, 2018 at 12:48pm PST

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If paint drips in the forest and you were the only one there to hear – if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist?, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? I could hear the chaotic laughter trailing behind me. It turned the ageless trees into a menace…To see a universe in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, More than the sound of my own beating heart, I miss the sound of a ticking clock. – Know your place

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Nov 15, 2018 at 1:44pm PST

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Their screams would echo through the house and reverberate against my eardrums until my mind would fracture. Years went by and with each fracture; I lost a piece of my soul until I became lost and empty inside. If the town were a black hole, I was the helpless star being sucked into oblivion. It was an oblivion I craved. – Bliss City

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Nov 14, 2018 at 12:42pm PST

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Her complexity is a glorious fire that consumes, while her simplicity goes unapproachable. But if one takes time to understand her, there is something beautiful to find, something simple to be loved. But she goes unloved, for being misunderstood. – you're a manifold

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Nov 8, 2018 at 12:37pm PST

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The Moving moment I met myself – Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. I was caged within a four dimensional cube that eclipsed the world around me in an icy mist. I screamed; begging someone, anyone to hear my pleas, but my voice had been extinguished and left me with a slight wheeze from what little oxygen I had. I could glimpse the field of energy as it shrank through the safety of my circle to envelop me in a blazing grip. I was alone; unbearably separated from my reality. The walls that caged me were not of this world, but were within my mind. I hold infinity in the palm of my hand and eternity in an hour. Because I found my purpose, and there was nothing to break it. I was saved by the ghost of my future wife.

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Nov 6, 2018 at 12:54pm PST

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I couldn’t be with people and I didn’t want to be alone. Suddenly my perspective shifted and I was far out in space, watching the world. I could see millions and millions of people, all slotted into their lives, then I could see me. I’d lost my place in the universe. It had closed up and there was nowhere for me to be. I was more lost than I had known. At war with my conscience, the stars reflecting off the corals, colours I can't describe. I FELT ALIVE. – Cycles in the Silence, 2018

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Oct 22, 2018 at 1:02pm PDT

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I've crossed some kind of invisible line and I don't know how I got here. It's a strange place. It's a place where a little dreaming and then some sleepy, early morning thinking has led me into considerations of death and annihilation. I could hear my heart beating. I could hear everyone's heart. I could hear the human race sat there watching me. Not one of us moving, not even when the room went dark. Weeping in doctors arm, I wake up screaming. Your ghost still haunts me. I don’t know what they are called, the spaces between seconds, but I think of you always in those intervals. – The walls are talking

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Oct 18, 2018 at 1:00pm PDT

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My work "Solitude, 2017" in the new @paradiso_ibiza Hotel, In the Grand Suite, in ibiza. Open May 2019 //

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Oct 15, 2018 at 1:08pm PDT

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A large drop of sun lingered on the horizon and then dripped over and was gone, and the sky was brilliant over the spot where it had gone, and a torn cloud, like a bloody wound, hung over the spot of its going. And dusk crept over the sky from the eastern horizon. Now she’s lit by the warm orange vanishing from the horizon as not quite day, becomes not quite night. The only noise now was the rain, battering softly with the magnificent indifference of nature for the tangled passions of two human. It didn’t rain for you, maybe, but it always rains for me. The sky shatters and rains shards of glass. Tonight is a bloodbath. – Knight Talks

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Oct 9, 2018 at 1:36pm PDT

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No fiction, no myths, no lies, no tangled webs – this is how I imagined my homeland. Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into language. – immigrant

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Oct 4, 2018 at 1:00pm PDT

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I read and I am liberated. I acquire objectivity. I cease being myself and so scattered. And what I read, instead of being like a nearly invisible people that sometimes oppresses me, is the external world’s remarkable clarity, the sun that sees everyone, the moon that stains the still earth with shadows, the wide expanses that end in the sea, the blackly solid trees whose tops greenly wave. I carry my awareness of defeat like a banner of victory. – Liberated

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Sep 28, 2018 at 10:23am PDT

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Don't use the word "Eternity", We live too long to remember the beginning. She smiles in the warm water, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy. I breathe slowly and deeply. I look out the window, vision blurring searching for answers. I don't walk the streets a ghost anymore. I make my mind still, I control my mind. I start seeing a perfect reproduction of myself. A feeling of unity, extinction, harmony, affinity…. He offered her the world. She said she had her own – Warm water – For @tortugaliving #envisiontortuga

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Sep 25, 2018 at 12:12pm PDT

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Let me man up, and get in my zone. It was summer 2013. At first I felt dizzy – not with the kind of dizziness that makes the body reel but the kind that's like a dead emptiness in the brain, an instinctive awareness of the void. Everything around me was evaporating. My whole life, my memories, my imagination and its contents, my personality – it's all evaporating. I continuously feel that I was someone else, that I felt something else, that I thought something else. I walked along the street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul. It was summer 2017, I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist. – Prevail or be forgotten

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Sep 19, 2018 at 1:09pm PDT

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Breathing in, I see all my ancestors in me: my mineral ancestors, plant ancestors, mammal ancestors, and human ancestors. My ancestors are always present, alive in every cell of my body, and I play a part in their immortality. To belong nowhere is a blessing. I preach darkness. I don't inspire hope, only shadows. It's up to you to find the light. I'd rather die my way than live yours. – Kurdistan

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Sep 17, 2018 at 1:33pm PDT

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I've never been lonely. I've been in a room, my chest felt tight. I've been depressed, and anxious. I've felt awful, but I never felt that one other person could enter that room and cure what was bothering me. In other words, loneliness is something I've never been bothered with because I've always had this terrible itch for solitude. It's being at a party, or at a stadium full of people cheering for something, that I might feel loneliness. You know the typical crowd, "Wow, it's Friday night, what are you going to do? Just sit there?" Well, yeah. Because there's nothing out there. I've never been bothered with the need to rush out into the night. I hid in my utopia, because I didn't want to hide in factories. That's all. Sorry for all the millions, but I've never been lonely. I like myself. – They call me a recluse

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Aug 20, 2018 at 1:38pm PDT

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“I'm sorry. I didn't know you were coming or I'd have cleaned up a little more. My life, I mean, not just the apartment".…she smiles in an exhausted but warm sort of way, as though she is a brilliant sun in some other galaxy. I will always be here for you . Time is nothing — The last banquet, 2018

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Aug 13, 2018 at 1:10pm PDT

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My life has been the thread through the labyrinth, the net under the high-wire walker. I am a product of war, washed up on that little island in a tide of blood. What made us amazing wasn't that we had miraculous powers. It was that we had escaped the carnage, and making changes. Making the most of this unremarkable life that had been mapped out for me. “I knew there was something peculiar about you," she said. "And I mean that as the highest compliment". They worried that I spent too much time alone, clinging to the notion that socialising was therapeutic. So was drinking, I reminded them. It's as if the more I cared about something, the less I can see. Emotion clouds my vision. – Stargazing //

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Aug 7, 2018 at 1:40pm PDT

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I breathe slowly and deeply. I make my eyes still under eyelids, I make my mind still. They were a deep emerald green, the exact same color as mine, and they glowed with an intensity I had never witnessed before. The sun's reflection making them sparkle like dancing crystals. The emerald irises appeared to be swirling in circles, creating the illusion that his eyes were never-ending. Flecks of darker emerald clustered around each pupil made my breath catch in my throat. Suddenly, my disheartened mood vanished, almost as if I had never felt sadness before. Something about these eyes held me in place, as if I had found a balance, free of worries and concerns. – I make my mind still, 2018

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Aug 1, 2018 at 1:36pm PDT

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There are all these people here I don't know by sight or by name. And we pass alongside each other and don't have any connection. And they don't know me and I don't know them. And now I'm leaving town and there are all these people I will never know. I was so scared of dying for 25 years without ever being really seen, without anyone seeing my ideas. Can you understand? – lost & found

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Jul 19, 2018 at 2:04pm PDT

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Maybe I'm dreaming you. Maybe you're dreaming me; maybe we only exist in each other's dreams and every morning when we wake up we forget all about each other. Sometimes I time travel. I am a trick, an illusion of the highest order, so incredible that I am actually true. – butterflies //

A post shared by Tishk Barzanji (@tishkbarzanji) on Jul 4, 2018 at 1:32pm PDT