Baloch Artist threatened to abandon his artistic career

By Omran Doushouki

It has been a couple of years now that I have been following one of the most talented and gifted artists of the Baloch nation on the social media. Whose works I have admired since the day I came to know of him. Every new or latest work of his contained an excellent factor within itself. I have always been curious to know what will his next artistic work be, and was intriguingly waiting for it.

As every single work of his portrayed the Baloch culture, lifestyle and its simplicity. He was exhibiting and promoting the Baloch nation’s way of life in a creative and artistic manner. Unfortunately, he had to abandon his artistic career forever due to the constant life threats he received from religious fanatics. Never in my wildest imaginations have I ever thought that one day his artistic career would end in such an early stage of development, at least not in such a manner.

The artist I am referring to is Hassan Yadgarzadeh, a 38 years old sculpture artist whom has attracted the attention of a lot of people in recent years specially after installing three of his famous Balochi sculptures in different parts of Chahbahar city. One of his most famous sculpture is ‘The Mother’ which is a statue of a mother in Balochi traditional attire with a child in her lap, which is installed on the mother square in Chahbahar. His other works include the Fisher man which is installed in Kargar Street and a statue of a well-known historical singer Kamalan Hoth.

Hassan Yadgarzadeh started his painting career in 1991 and had his first panting exhibition in Chahbahar when he was only 14 years old. His evolutionary shift into sculpture work orientated 8 years ago when he met a well-known Kurdish sculpture artist ‘Hadi Ziaoddini’ and spent some time with him in Kurdistan to learn the arts of sculpture. In 2008 he was invited by Uppsala University in Sweden to exhibit his paintings in a number of Scandinavian cities including Oslo, Stockholm, Boras and Astorp, where he was received with outmost respect and his collection of art work was much admired.

It’s a pity in today’s world of modern art we live in a society where people hold no regards or values for an artist like Hassan. It has been quite some time that Hassan has been under constant harassments by some religious fanatics whom believe that Art is evil and it is prohibited by God.

It has reached to an extent that these religious elements started abusing and threatening him randomly in public places and once even in a taxi. Taking into account the past record of such fanatic elements and sheer amount of pressure from family members, Hassan decided to take these threats seriously and has officially announced on all his social media accounts the end to his artistic career.

Today they targeted Hassan Yadgarzadeh, tomorrow could be the newly emerging young film-makers, musicians and singers. Until they eradicate all the talented individuals amongst our society whom possess the ability to represent the Baloch nation in an artistic manner, and have what’s required to be the role models of a tolerant society and bring positive changes. It is high time for the conscientious and educated people to step forward and prevent such elements to harass any further the bright individuals of our society. Otherwise it will be too late to realise when we witness our next generation being thought sheer religious bigotry