English

Interview

Majd Abdel Hamid: ‘Nothing is more present today than violence’

Regional Conversations is a new series of online articles by the Ruya Foundation. Through interviews, studio visits, essays and online galleries, the series addresses issues surrounding art and conflict in the region. Majd Abdelhamid is an insomniac. In the evenings, he trawls through Youtube videos and the news on television, collecting images and videos of…

Interview

Venice Conversations: War Reporter Ali Arkady Documents the Art Scene in Baghdad

Ali Arkady (b. 1982, Khanaqin) is a photographer and filmmaker from Khanaqin, Iraq. Since 2014, after the armed group ISIS invaded and took control of vast areas of northern Iraq Arkady has been reporting regularly from the frontline, embedded with the Kurdish forces and the Iraqi Security Forces. He has covered the recent operations to drive ISIS out of the…

Interview

Reconstructing the things around us: Afifa Aleiby on the role of the artist in society

Afifa Aleiby (born 1952, Basra) grew up in a family devoted to culture and the arts where she painted from an early age. She studied at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad and worked as an illustrator for the Iraqi press. In 1974, she left Iraq for the Soviet Union to study at the…

Interview

Plastic Women and Teahouses: interview with the artist Rozhgar Mustafa

Rozhgar Mustafa is a video and performance artist based in Sulaymaniya. After training as a painter at the Institute of Fine Arts and the University of Sulaymaniya, Mustafa soon began experimenting with video, performance and ready-made objects to make works about women and womanhood in Iraq. In 2011, Mustafa arranged for a group of protesters…