English

Event

Ruya Lab #5: A Vernacular for Every Day Life (Part II) with Aneta Szylak

The curator Aneta Szylak held a second workshop for artists in Baghdad with the Ruya Foundation. The aim of the 4 day workshop was for artists to develop a vernacular artistic language, so that they can engage with contemporary art practices, while producing work that is relevant to their local context. “A vernacular artistic language…

Video

Video: Girls of Baghdad

In March 2015, the Ruya Foundation launched the first drama therapy project in Iraq. Girls from the Dar Azuhur Orphanage in Baghdad worked with six leading Iraqi actors to learn the basics of theatre. Together they wrote, produced, directed and acted in their own play. This is their story.

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…

News

Art and Its Objects: 5 Essays on Contemporary Art Selected by Jonathan Watkins

Ruya Notebooks is a new educational publishing initiative that will release two titles a year. For each Notebook a well known artist, curator or critic will select five short texts that they have identified as fundamental to their creative development. These texts will then be translated into Arabic, in most cases for the first time,…