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The Iraq Pavilion Opens to the Public

‘Fatherland,’ the Iraq Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale has opened to the public after a busy and exciting week of previews. Visitors at preview tours of the pavilion included representatives of institutions such as the Tate, Art Dubai, the Museum of Modern Art Buenos Aires, the Serpentine and the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and…

News

Book launch: Fatherland, the Iraq Pavilion Catalogue

The Ruya Foundation has launched Fatherland, the catalogue for the Iraq Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale. The new publication includes an essay on the artist Serwan Baran by the art historian Natasha Gasparian and illustrations of Baran’s new commissions and preliminary sketches for the exhibition. As part of his research for the Fatherland exhibition, Baran collected…

Essay

Themes of Fatherland #1: The Witness

In a recent interview, the Iraqi-Kurdish Serwan Baran said of his new exhibition for the Iraq Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale: “I want viewers to be witnesses to the crime, to understand what it means to have lived a lifetime of conflict.” The artist’s new commission for the exhibition The Last Meal (2019) depicts…

Event

Ruya Shop: Akam Shex Hadi’s ‘Travels in Assyria’

The Ruya Shop presents new video work by the photographer and filmmaker Akam Shex Hadi. Travels in Assyria (2018) traces the aftermath of the recent war in Mosul, while drawing on Iraq’s ancient and colonial history. The film brings together two different scenes of a school play at the Assyrian rooms of the the Louvre…