Posts tagged Iraq
“Our Children, Where To?”, Iraqi artist Riad Nehmeh reminisces about his childhood, depicting memories both bitter and sweet
In the end people, and especially children, are the focal point of all my work, which revolves around humans and memory. I present panoramic artwork that is interconnected, with a child emerging in gradual shading from a foggy image. My intention is [to show] that children are thrust into an adult world and the wall creates a memory of the place where the child enters to inhabit this memory.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NUMBERS STARTS TODAY
An exhibition of infographics on Iraq by Mona Chalabi
22 March 2013 11:00am - 28 March 2013 5:00pm
@ The Arab British Centre, 1 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE
These images explore a story of progress in Iraq that has no easy beginning, middle or end. Each piece depicts a development statistic from a trusted source which is conveyed using a photo of the people that make up the numbers.
The 12 pieces use photography taken from trips to Iraq in 2012 and 2013 to interview Iraqis about their hopes for post-conflict stabilisation. Whether in Erbil, Najaf or Baghdad, the collective narrative Iraqis recounted was a complicated one. The past ten years have been marked by progression, recession and stagnation - development has been anything but linear.
Reel Iraq 2013 marks 10 years since the US and UK led military invasion, against which the world mobilised in solidarity with the people of Iraq. Reel Iraq will explore the contribution of art, culture and creativity to Iraqi life in a time of conflict, with over 50 events taking place in London, Edinburgh, Bristol, Glasgow, Dumfries, Leeds, Derry/Londonderry, Newcastle and Stirling.
PHOTOGRAPHS BY NUMBERS
An exhibition of infographics on Iraq by Mona Chalabi
22 - 28 March 2013 - The Arab British Centre
These images explore a story of progress in Iraq that has no easy beginning, middle or end. Each piece depicts a development statistic from a trusted source which is conveyed using a photo of the people that make up the numbers.
We have fine and talented artists in the Arab world but circumstances are not in their favour. We reside in a spiritual part of the world and the soil of our region breathes culture. Culture is ingrained in us. Old Damascus is an accumulation of culture and civilisation throughout the ages. How do you expect artists not to emerge from this land? Our artists are committed to their humanitarian causes and those of their countries. They are mirrors of their societies.
Razan Chatti, a set designer and scenographer, is cultivating young talent under the auspices of the Afak (Horizons) foundation, which she launched in 2011.
Through Afak, she organises traveling exhibitions for artists from Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, whose works carry powerful humanitarian messages.
In My Mother’s Arms + Q&A Mohamed & Atia Al Daradji
Thursday 21st February, 2013 at 6:30pm
The Lexi Cinema London
In a dangerous district in Baghdad Husham cares fiercely for a group of 32 young orphans, some whose parents have been killed, some who have run away, but all who have been abused and abandoned by the state.
When their landlord gives the group just two weeks to vacate the only house they have ever felt safe in a panicked search for new shelter ensues. Fighting tirelessly to continue to build on the boys’ hopes, dreams and prospects while also keeping them from being reclaimed by the state, Husham crosses religious and racial divides to find help.
IN MY MOTHER’S ARMS is the story of some of the Iraq war’s biggest victims, children, trying to live out the bittersweet dramas of childhood, against a far more threatening backdrop.
Samarra - Centre of the World
101 Years of Archaeological Research on the Tigris
18 January - 26 May 2013 Pergamon Museum
Islamic Archaeology
Marking the 100th anniversary of excavations at the site, the Museum für Islamische Kunst (Museum of Islamic Art) presents an exhibition on the legendary royal city of Samarra, which lay approx. 120 km north of Bagdad on the banks of the Tigris, and which served as the government capital of the powerful Abbasid Caliphate from 836 to 892.
Samarra boasted one of most elaborate city plans in the world at the time. With its gigantic palaces, mosques, walled hunting parks, polo fields, and horse racing courses it stretched to an astonishing length of almost 50 km. Prominent ruins were excavated from 1911 to 1913 by the German archaeologist and Orientalist, Ernst Herzfeld. It was the first scientific excavation expressly dedicated to uncovering a site dating from the Islamic period.
Today’s exhibition presents a large selection of the finds that made their way to the Berlin museums under the then prevailing antiquities law, by which the found objects were divided up, with half retained by the local country and half removed by the country responsible for financing and conducting the dig.
Among the objects on display are wall paintings, stucco, and wood panelling, which once adorned the walls of palaces. Also on show are lusterware ceramics, Chinese porcelain, and cut glass: testaments of the city’s innovative artisanship and far-reaching trade links. The exhibition is enriched by a selection of historical excavation photographs taken by Ernst Herzfeld. They amount to important documents of the ruins, but also depict the landscape and everyday life at the dig.
(Photo Credit: Great Mosque of Samarra © Museum of Islamic Art, National Museums in Berlin Photo: Ernst Herzfeld, excavation photo 1911-13) - The Mosque of Samarra was the largest mosque in the world holding up to 100,000 people)
The Virtual Museum of Iraq is a scientific and cultural initiative promoted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and realized by the Italian National Research Council.
The purpose of the project is to provide the public with the opportunity, through a web site, of coming into contact with the archaeological historical and artistic heritage of one of the most important museum institutions in the world, the National Museum of Iraq, in Baghdad.
The museum, the foundation and development of which is linked to the historical and institutional events of Iraq itself, is home to an extraordinary collection of historical treasures. This collection grew and was extended thanks to the scientific surveys conducted by local and foreign archaeological teams starting in the 1920’s.
In 2003 the Baghdad Museum joined the sad list of world cultural sites destroyed or looted during wartime events. Thanks to the continuing efforts by local authorities and the international community, the activity of re-organization has been carry out and partially completed.
INSIDE OUT project in Baghdad, IRAQ by JR
HALIM AL KARIM: WITNESS FROM BAGHDAD 2013
Organisation: ARTSPACE London
Time: 16 January 2013 10:00am - 23 February 2013 6:00pm
Place: ARTSPACE London, 7 Milner Street London SW3 2QA
Halim Al Karim’s approach to his photography relies heavily on his attempt to understand his past; trying to comprehend what happened to him and his country. His own personal view of people and of the world depicted in his work can be symbolically enlarged to incorporate general and international interpretations.
(Image: Hidden Witnesses by Halim Al-Karim)
THE ARABIAN NIGHTS at The Tricycle Theatre
November 30 2012 to January 12 2013
“In our heads, my lord, we do contain all the images of the universe.” In Baghdad, a young woman starts a revolution through the power of storytelling. For three years, King Shahryar has taken bloody vengeance against the women of his city, marrying a new bride every night and killing her in the morning. Scheherezade is determined to stop the bloodshed using the only weapons she has – her wit and imagination. Night after night, the King’s newest bride weaves tales of seduction, silliness and suspense. How long can her stories save her? A punky, modern reimagining of ancient tales.
Sorrow fills my heart that the Arab Spring has skipped Iraq.The wind of change that toppled regimes and rulers didn’t reach the country… Americans allowed a sectarian-based political system due to their beliefs that Iraqis are divided by their sectarian and ethnic background and that the political assembly must represent this truth. At least the majority of well-educated people in Iraq are not sectarian, nor do they believe in such a divide.
Excerpt from “Adnan al-Pachachi in the Eye of the Storm,” former Iraqi foreign minister and representative to the United Nations
25 Years of Arab Creativity
Exhibition at the Institut du Monde Arabe, “25 Years of Arab Creativity,” showcases contemporary Arab art.
In a Baghdad E.R., Womens’ Psychological Wounds Go Untreated
Another blog to bring tears to one’s eyes. The blog is written by Lubna Naji for the New York Times, a 25-year-old junior doctor who works in the countryside in Iraq’s Wasit Province.
These women are especially at risk in a health care system in which overworked doctors like me focus only on saving their lives; healing their invisible wounds is another story. Even though Iraqis have been living in a violent, unstable environment for years, there is still no culture of mental health care here. It has little to no support from the state or health authorities, and people who do seek psychiatric help are stigmatized by their families and society: these two truths reinforce each other. Even blast victims, if they recover, don’t get counselling.
Cultural Cleansing in Iraq
Why Museums Were Looted, Libraries Burned and Academics Murdered
by Raymond W. Baker, Shereen T. Ismael, Tareq Y. Ismael
Why did the invasion of Iraq result in cultural destruction and killings of intellectuals? Convention sees accidents of war and poor planning in a campaign to liberate Iraqis. The authors argue instead that the invasion aimed to dismantle the Iraqi state to remake it as a client regime.
Post-invasion chaos created conditions under which the cultural foundations of the state could be undermined. The authors painstakingly document the consequences of the occupiers’ willful inaction and worse, which led to the ravaging of one of the world’s oldest recorded cultures. Targeted assassination of over 400 academics, kidnapping and the forced flight of thousands of doctors, lawyers, artists and other intellectuals add up to cultural cleansing. This important work lays to rest claims that the invasion aimed to free an educated population to develop its own culture of democracy.
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