Kevork Mourad

KEVORK MOURAD

Born in Qamishli, Syria, Mourad now lives and works in New York City. He received his Master of Fine Arts from the Yerevan Institute of Fine Arts in Armenia. 

Mourad employs his technique of live drawing and animation in concert with musicians – developing a collaboration in which art and music harmonize with one another. Collaborators include Yo-Yo Ma, Kim Kashkashian, the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Brooklyn Rider, The Knights, Perspectives Ensemble, Paola Prestini, and Kinan Azmeh and he has performed in many institutions, including The Aga Khan Museum (Toronto), The Art Institute of Chicago, The American Museum of Natural History, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Bronx Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, ElbPhilharmonie (Germany), Rhode Island School of Design, Nara Museum (Japan), Lincoln Center Atrium, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Mourad has been a resident teaching artist at Brandeis University, Harvard University, and Holy Cross (Worcester). He is the only visual artist member in Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Ensemble and is featured in the film “Music of Strangers” (2016).

Recent commissions include Israel in Egypt, for the Los Angeles Master Chorale, Sound of Stone to accompany the exhibition “Armenia!” for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Well Wish Ya, a dance performance piece with the OYO Dance Troupe in Namibia. His performance Home Within, co-produced with clarinetist Kinan Azmeh, has toured the world. In 2021, an expanded version with the Silkroad project toured the United States, performing at the Lied Center, NE, and Loeb Drama Center, MA. 

The 2016 recipient of the Robert Bosch Stiftung Film Prize, he premiered his animated film, 4 Acts for Syria, at the Stuttgart Animation Festival. 

In 2019 he had a solo exhibit at Tabari Artspace in Dubai. In September 2019, he exhibited at Latitude, in Yerevan, Armenia, alongside Imran Qureshi, Roberto Pugliese, and Walid Siti. That year he was also commissioned by the Aga Khan Foundation to create a site-specific 20-foot drawing-sculpture called Seeing Through Babel, at London’s Ismaili Center, addressing the importance of diversity in our contemporary times. The piece was exhibited starting in October 2020 at the Asia Society Triennial in New York. His works are in the permanent collection of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, the Spurlock Museum in Illinois, the Aga Khan Museum in Toronto, and the Pergamonmuseum in Berlin.

In October 2020 he premiered the visuals for Beethoven’s Fidelio for the Korea National Opera. His most recent projects include: Unholy Wars, Spoleto Festival (soon to be at Opera Philadelphia), 2022; Shams, with Verdigris Ensemble, Dallas, 2023; Triptych with the Kronos Quartet and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2023; Invisible Cities with Ragamalla Dance Company, Cowell Performance Center, MN, 2023: Paper Pianos with Alarm Will Sound, EMPAC, NY, 2023, to be performed soon at the new Perelman Art Center in NYC.