English

Interview

“A Tapestry Woven in My Soul”: Sadik Kwaish Alfraji on childhood recollections that shaped him as an artist.

Sadik Kwaish Alfraji (b. Baghdad, 1960) lives and works in Amersfoort, the Netherlands. Trained as a painter and printmaker, he also makes animation videos and art books . Alfraji left Iraq in the 1990s, where he later settled in the Netherlands. As a young artist in Baghdad in the 1980s, Alfraji worked as an animator for a children’s television programme. At…

Interview

Asmaa Alanbari on identity, culture and the body.

Asmaa Alanbari is an Iraqi born visual artist and creative director based in London. Her work deals with identity and cross cultural dialogue through the painting and photography of the human body. She directs public art events and projects, such as art exhibitions and other interactive cultural events. One example is a program called “Self…

Interview

Writer Hassan Blasim on magic, horror, and his journey on foot to Europe.

Hassan Blasim is an Iraqi writer and filmmaker, whose series of short stories The Iraqi Christ won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize in 2014. He speaks to Ruya about being a film student in Baghdad at the time of the UN sanctions, shooting his controversial film The Wounded Camera, his journey on foot to Europe, and his upcoming…

Essay

The Iraqi city and architecture in Latif Al Ani’ s work: yesterday’s modernity, a model for the future?

Architectural historian Caecilia Pieri reflects on photographer Latif Al Ani’s work of the 50s and 60s, documenting the modern expansion of Baghdad and Iraq’s cities. Pieri is an associate researcher at the French Institute of the Near East, and the author of Baghdad: la construction d’une capitale moderne 1914-1960 (2015) and Baghdad Arts Deco (2003) among other publications. Latif al Ani…