Reflections by Contemporary Iraqi Artists

A man is shown from the knees up. He wears a T-shirt, jacket, and pants. Behind him is grass and what appears to be a wall.
The head and shoulders of a woman with shoulder-length hair. She wears a collared blouse and a jacket. Through a window at her right is the partial view of an arch.
A woman with shoulder-length hair and glasses is shown from the head to the chest. She wears a necklace with the numbers 501140130130305 as a pendant.
A bearded man wears a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans and stands in front of a large image of figures and animals. His right hand is in his pocket, while his left arm is bent with the palm of his hand open and his fingers extended. He smiles and appears to be in conversation.
The head and shoulders of a smiling man who looks directly at the camera. The top of his head is bald, and he wears a collared shirt.

Adel Abidin:
Debris

A man is shown from the knees up. He wears a T-shirt, jacket, and pants. Behind him is grass and what appears to be a wall.

Portrait of Adel Abidin by Thana Faroq, 2023. Courtesy of Adel Abidin.

Adel Abidin (b. 1973) is an Iraqi multimedia artist who received his BA in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad (2000), before relocating to Finland to earn his MFA in time and space arts at the Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki (2005). Currently living between Helsinki and Amman, Jordan, Abidin explores the complex interrelationships between visual arts, politics, and identity.

Abidin’s installation at ISAW, Debris: Unveiling the Fragments of Shi’ite Identity in Iraq, consists of eleven wall fragments collected from Baghdad and Beirut. Each piece of debris features the remnants of colorful posters of eleven of the twelve Shi’ite imams, the political and spiritual heirs of the Prophet Muhammad in Islam. The imams are presented as religious icons, with a focus on their faces and upper bodies. These representations developed in Shi’ite enclaves in Iran are reminiscent of Christian icon painting, where the suffering of Christ found resonance in depicting the suffering of Imam Al-Hussain, the son of the Prophet Muhammad.

The poster on the right shows the head and shoulders of a bearded man with long hair. One dove flies in the sky behind him, while two doves fly below him. To his right and left is Arabic text. The poster on the left shows a bearded man whose head and shoulders are covered by a green cloth. Below him are two much smaller figures and a rearing horse. In the right foreground are two small tents. In the bottom right corner is Arabic text.

Iraqi woman walks past posters of Jesus Christ (right) and Shi’ite Imam Al-Hussain (left). Baghdad, January 27, 2011. ALI AL-SAADI/AFP via Getty Images.

In recent years, these icon depictions have proliferated on colorful, eye-catching posters and billboards, particularly during Shi’ite commemorations of the imams’ deaths. The plastering of walls with religious images also draws on ancient Mesopotamian traditions of monumental art that express religious and cultural identities—making the posters a continuation of visual conventions from Iraq’s ancient past.

Three lithographs in a wall case hang above a glass-covered box set on a table and containing fragments of poster-covered walls.

Installation view of Adel Abidin's Debris at ISAW. Digital image. 2023. Photo by Andrea Brizzi.

Paradoxically, these posters have been the victims of sectarian violence, echoing the unfortunate ends of the imams themselves. While the images are meant to evoke empathy, they instead laid bare old wounds and grievances between the different Islamic sects in Iraq that had coexisted peacefully before the US-led invasion of 2003. As such, Debris is also a commentary on the growing division of people and communities in Iraq, all in the quest for ideological and religious purity.

Visit Adel Abidin's website.

Nadine Hattom:
Shadows

The head and shoulders of a woman with shoulder-length hair. She wears a collared blouse and a jacket. Through a window at her right is the partial view of an arch.

Portrait of Nadine Hattom, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Nadine Hattom (b. 1980) is an Iraqi-Australian artist born in Baghdad to a Mandaean (an ethno-religious group from southern Iraq) family. Her family emigrated to United Arab Emirates shortly after the Iran-Iraq War (1980–1988) began, where they stayed for nine years before moving to Australia. After the Gulf War and the events of 2003, the Mandaean community in Australia has grown to one of the largest in the world, outside Iraq. Hattom moved briefly to Japan, then back to Sydney, before settling in Berlin in 2011, where she now lives and works. Her personal story of migration is spotlighted in her work, which explores the multiplicity of identity and memory.

To the right of a paved road are a stretch of sand and sparse grass that extends to sand and oil derricks in the distance. A sign with an arrow pointing upward reads Iraq Al 'Azraq 40 M, together with Arabic text.

Photograph taken from Hattom’s attempt to cross into Iraq through Jordan in 2013. Nadine Hattom. 2013. Courtesy of the artist.

Hattom’s installation at ISAW, Shadows, consists of a series of ten open-source photographs taken by the US Department of Defense during “Operation Iraqi Freedom” (2003–11), some of which can now be found on Wikipedia. Hattom intentionally used these “public domain” images as a commentary of how the land of Iraq itself has become an open access resource on the internet. The saturation of images of foreign soldiers in Iraq has created a digital visual narrative that focuses solely on war.

In the middle ground stands a soldier, wearing a helmet and with a weapon hanging at his side. He looks through an arch. In the distance is a wall with an arch that is flanked by open doors, one large and one small, on either side.

A U.S. Marine with a ground combat element assigned to Delta Company, 2nd Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, Task Force Mechanized, Multi-National Force - West walks through the Hatra Ruins in the Jazeerah Desert in Iraq on July 20, 2008. The task force is conducting disruption operations in the area to deny the enemy sanctuary and prevent foreign fighters from accessing the area. DoD photo by Lance Cpl. Albert F. Hunt, U.S. Marine Corps. Public Domain. 

A view through a round arch to a wall with another round arch flanked on either side by one open and one closed rectangular door.

Nadine Hattom. Shadows, 9 (Hatra). Archival pigment print. 2016. ISAW Checklist no. 62. Courtesy of the artist.

Hattom edited out the figures of the soldiers, pixel by pixel, thereby revealing idyllic landscapes and ancient monuments that provide timeless scenes, but which had been secondary to the original photographer’s gaze. Her images are an act of reclamation, challenging the idea that Iraq is a land that is only war-torn. However, Hattom left remains of the soldiers' presence through their shadows, which serve as haunting traces of conflict. She also retained the original captions from the US Department of Defense, providing a look at the language of warfare in the public domain.

Rows of palm trees are planted in the sand with clumps of grass. The shadow of a figure is at the right.
A view through a brick wall with a round arch to two arches behind it.
Boulders scattered on red earth in the foreground recede to brown hills and plains.
The shadow of a figure’s head and torso are cast against a thatched wall.

Nadine Hattom, Shadows 2, 10, 5, and 3. Archival pigment print. 2016. ISAW Checklist nos. 55, 63, 58, and 56. Courtesy of the artist.

Visit Nadine Hattom's website.

Hanaa Malallah:
Babylon Curse

A woman with shoulder-length hair and glasses is shown from the head to the chest. She wears a necklace with the numbers 501140130130305 as a pendant.

Portrait of Hanaa Malallah, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Even from an early age Hanaa Malallah was immersed in the ruins of Iraq, as she was born in Dhi Qar Governorate on the fringes of the ancient city of Ur. This early interest in archaeology and art led her to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad, where she received her doctorate in the philosophy of painting in ancient Mesopotamia. There she was one of the students of Shakir Hassan Al Said, who was one of the co-founders, along with Jewad Selim, of the Baghdad Modern Art Group in the 1950s. Malallah’s background in both art and archaeology provides her with a unique insight on archaeological practice and cultural heritage in Iraq.

Malallah left Iraq in 2006, and now lives in exile in London alongside other Iraqi artists such as Walid Siti. Her current work focuses on the theme of “ruination” and explores her personal perspectives of the ancient and modern ruins in the landscape of Iraq. She sees ruins not as inert traces of the past, but as living landscapes that shape the present and future. Ancient ruins are imbued with vitality, inspiring rejuvenation and transformation through a glorious past. In contrast, modern rubble is traumatic, embodying the chaos and destruction of recent conflicts. These contrasting processes and landscapes of ruination are in a constant dialogue that can be used to engage Iraqi people with their heritage. This leads Malallah to beg the question, can ruins act as windows not only to the past, but also to a hopeful future for Iraq?

A stepped tower culminates in London’s Big Ben tower but is ruptured at the center. In the left foreground three men—two in the Western clothing of excavators and one in Middle Eastern robes—turn toward the viewer.
A stepped tower culminates in London’s Big Ben tower. Birds swirl at the top, while dark markings divide the structure vertically.
A stepped tower culminates in London’s Big Ben tower. The structure crumbles at the right. In the foreground are three figures. A man in Renaissance dress and another in a Western military uniform look on, while in front of them a man dressed in Middle Eastern garb faces the two Westerners.
A stepped tower culminates in London’s Big Ben tower. Delicate brushstrokes suggest swirling birds at the top, while dark slashes at the right dissolve the structure’s form.

Hanaa Malallah’s Babylon Curse series 1–4. Charcoal, pencil, colored pencil, and acrylic on paper. 2023. ISAW Checklist nos. 22–26. Courtesy of the artist.

The theme of ruins is explored in her commissioned pieces for the ISAW exhibition: Babylon Curse. Malallah provides a series of four images that convey a dystopian reality, where London has become a ruin. The remains of the city’s iconic monument, Big Ben, are entangled with those of the mythical Tower of Babel from the Book of Genesis, believed to be located in southern Mesopotamia. In Hebrew mythology the tower is a symbol of human arrogance, which led Yahweh to punish humans with the loss of a universal language and the division of peoples. By equating Big Ben with the Tower of Babel, Malallah portrays it as a symbol of Western hubris, which has been subsequently cursed with ruination. In the two final images of the series, spectral figures of local Iraqi and British soldiers, in conjunction with the Tower of Babel and Big Ben, question ownership of the site—Colonize and Decolonize. Part of the inspiration for these images came from a film of British soldiers entering Babylon in 1917 and from drone footage from a visit to Babylon in 2022, both of which can be viewed in the ISAW gallery.

In the foreground are the ruins of a brick tower. A drone flies to its right. In the background is barren land with three roads that intersect at a single point as the background recedes into vegetation.

Hanaa Malallah. Dove - Drone Hovering over Babylon Borsippa Twin Towers. Still from video. 2023. ISAW Checklist no. 19. Courtesy of the artist.

Visit Hanaa Malallah's website. You can also find her collaborative project Ruins, Rubble, and Renewal online.

Mahmoud Obaidi:
Fragments

A bearded man wears a short-sleeved T-shirt and jeans and stands in front of a large image of figures and animals. His right hand is in his pocket, while his left arm is bent with the palm of his hand open and his fingers extended. He smiles and appears to be in conversation.

Portrait of Mahmoud Obaidi in his studio, 2023. Courtesy of the artist.

Mahmoud Obaidi (b. 1966) is an Iraqi-Canadian artist who received his BA in fine art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1990. The following year, he left Iraq and spent a number of years without a permanent home, traveling around the world, eventually landing in Doha and Beirut, where he currently lives and works. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a watershed moment for Obaidi, where he witnessed the destruction of the Baghdad—his home for much of his life. From that moment, he saw how Iraq’s story became written by Americans (rather than Iraqis) and it represented the death of his ability and desire to return to his country.

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Installation view of Mahmoud Obaidi’s Fragments at ISAW. Photo by Adrea Brizzi.

On view at ISAW is a partial installation of Obaidi’s Fragments (2016), a collection of objects cast in weathering steel and bronze, based on objects that were stolen, looted, or went missing as a result of the organized chaos of the 2003 invasion. These include Sumerian votive figures and the famous mask of Warka from Uruk, which was looted from the Iraq Museum and subsequently recovered. Also represented are everyday objects. Most haunting of all are the objects that illustrate the lives lost, seen through a series of girls' shoes. These objects symbolize the staggering scale and totality of loss resulting from the war, which will continue to impact the country for generations. The composition of the installation—with objects cascading down the wall and pooling onto a platform and piles of disorganized objects in vitrines—mirrors the systematic dismantling of Iraq. The result is mournful piles of rubble, which could represent an opportunity to rebuild a new Iraq. However, Obaidi questions who will be the ones to rebuild after such tragic loss.

 

Visit Mahmoud Obaidi's website.

Walid Siti:
Arched Tower

The head and shoulders of a smiling man who looks directly at the camera. The top of his head is bald, and he wears a collared shirt.

Portrait of Walid Siti, 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

Walid Siti (b. 1954) grew up in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan. His father had communist leanings and a strong sense of social justice—an upbringing that instilled in Siti the same sense. Siti’s work often encourages the viewer to consider disenfranchised groups or those who have been forgotten or silenced. He left Iraq in 1976, only a few years before Saddam Hussein’s rise to power in 1979, and eventually settled in London in 1984, where he remains today. 

An assembly of twenty-five sheets of paper on which are drawn a winding tower composed of vertical, diagonal, and horizontal black and white lines.

Walid Siti. Tower Series. Acrylic and crayon on paper. 2020. Courtesy of the artist.

Siti’s works are populated with mountains and towers, minarets and ziggurats, which draw on the landscape and cultural heritage of Mesopotamia. The towering spiraling form of the ninth century CE Malwiya (minaret) at the Great Mosque at Samarra is a particularly recurring motif in his work and something which he remembers from his youth. While Siti’s monolithic forms look imposing, they are often fragile, perforated structures, seemingly unable to support the weight of their monumental façades. His towers invite viewers to consider the hubris of their monumentality and the inherent fragility of power. The recurring motif of the Malwiya also expresses Siti’s feeling of displacement from Iraq. He was only able to visit this monument on a recent visit to Samarra in 2019, an experience he described as “overwhelming, mind-blowing and beautiful.”

A winding conical tower of seven tiers that decrease in diameter as they ascend. The tower stands on a rectangular base pierced with arches along the sides.

Latif Al Ani. Samarra, the spiral minaret of the Great Mosque. Gelatin silver negative on cellulose acetate film. 1960. ISAW Checklist no. 79. AIF: 0190an00115. Latif el Ani Collection © Courtesy of the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut.

A man wears a short-sleeved shirt and long pants. A camera hangs from his neck. He looks directly at the photographer. Behind him is a conical, spiraling structure of six levels. The top level has open arches. The structure stands on a rectangular base with arches cut into the walls.

Walid Siti visiting Samarra, October 2019. Courtesy of the artist.

Siti’s specially commissioned work for this exhibition, Arched Tower, builds on themes of power, displacement, and identity present in his other work. The tapering shape of the tower looms over viewers in ISAW’s lobby, fittingly backdropped and dwarfed by the grand spiraling staircase (which is reminiscent of the spiraling form of the Malwiya at Samarra). While imposing, it is also fragile and somewhat ephemeral. Its forty-one abstracted pointed arches, made from insulation board and plaster, form a solid structure punctured with voids, inviting the viewer to peer into the interior and contemplate what is missing. The asymmetry of the arches leaves an impression of intricate but ever-changing patterns of light and shadow that shift as the viewer moves around the tower. The structure in its entirety speaks to the multifaceted and fluctuating complexities of Siti’s identity—from the highly geometric patterns of Islamic art, the grand vertical forms of Mesopotamian ziggurats, the abstracted arches of modernist architecture, to the humble materials sourced from London thrift shops.

A man in paint-spattered work coveralls assembles the third level of pointed arches to form a pyramidal tower. Behind him are numerous models with stacked blocks, spiral assemblages, and a stack of boards. Other models constructed of rods and wire hang from the ceiling.

Walid Siti working on Arched Tower in his studio. London, 2023.

A sculpture of orty-one pointed arches stacked atop each other to form a pyramidal tower stands in front of a winding marble staircase.

Installation view of Walid Siti's Arched Tower at ISAW. 2023. Photo by Andrea Brizzi.

Visit Walid Siti's website.

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