English

Interview

Stitching my Mother’s Butterflies: Pavilion artist Haider Jabbar on why he became an artist.

Haider Jabbar (b. 1986) started his career in film, working in art direction on short and feature films. He received a classical art education at the Baghdad Institute of Fine Arts but succeeded in escaping canonical restrictions and now works in a very intimate and direct style of painting. He has had two solo shows…

Interview

Letters from Baghdad: painter and ceramicist Salam Atta Sabri

Born and raised in Baghdad, Salam Atta Sabri (b.1953) trained as a ceramicist and lived in the USA and Jordan for 16 years. He returned to Baghdad in 2005, where he produced some 300 drawings between 2012 and 2015 that he has never shown in public. These intensely personal works exhibit the experience of an…

Interview

Wafaa Bilal on drones, the Hudson River and why art should agitate.

Wafaa Bilal is a New York-based Iraqi artist, working with mixed media from installations to photography and digital arts. His project Virtual Jihadi (2008) recreated first person shooters that the US army used to train their staff. He talks to Ruya about his days as a student in Baghdad, life as an artist in New York, and…

Interview

“Making do and getting by”: Basra-based painter Hashim Taeeh

Hashim Taeeh (b.1948, Basra) is a painter based in Basra. His cardboard sculptures, in collaboration with the artist Yasseen Wami, were part of Welcome to Iraq, the Iraq Pavilion exhibition at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. The modest material and basic, minimalist style they prefer are entirely at odds with a popular taste in…