Artist Bistyek enjoys the freedom of living a creative life in full colour

In pants nearly as wide at the ankle as a downtown sidewalk, Bistyek cuts a striking silhouette on his daily marches through the Exchange District, an area the painter has made his muse since arriving in Winnipeg nine years ago.

He likes it here, loves it even, but as he’s established himself as one of the city’s most vibrant visual artists — with a street-honed style that pays homage to both Japanese anime series Dragon Ball Z and graffiti-inspired American painter Jean-Michel Basquiat — Bistyek won’t forget where he came from: he can’t.

Though the 30-year-old has built an enviable life here, he’s eminently aware that his circumstances are defined as much by sheer luck as they are by determination or talent. When he was growing up in Afrin, a village in Syria, his family was torn apart by civil war and discrimination against the Kurdish minority under the rule of dictator Bashar al Assad.

“I was living in Lebanon as a refugee for seven years, with a big group of friends, but day after day they started to cross the sea from Turkey or Greece. Some of them made it, some of them did not,” says the artist born Ormeya Zagros. “I turned to Mom and said, ‘I want to go across the sea. I cannot stay here. I don’t see a future here. I don’t see opportunities. There is so much discrimination and racism. I cannot build a life.’”