Art Review: Contemporary Art Iraq
Article published: Saturday, May 1st 2010
The decline of traditional culture, the position of women and perceptions of Iraqis in the wider world are amongst the themes cross-cutting the Contemporary Art Iraq exhibition, at Cornerhouse until 20 June. Sarah Irving reports.
From video documenting the last horse-drawn ‘chariot’ driver in Sulaimaniyah, to photographic portraits mocking orientalist paintings of nineteenth-century European artists, many of the works are explorations of the politics of identity, rather than explicit responses to the bloodiness of Iraq’s present and recent past.
The exhibition showcases the work of nineteen artists currently living and working in Iraq – explicitly excluding work from Iraqi artists in diaspora. This decision has its drawbacks, notably the narrow geographical range of the artists represented. Because the majority-Kurdish areas of northern Iraq are less dangerous than the rest of the country, and perhaps because the organisers’ strongest links were in Kurdish areas, fifteen of the artists are from Kirkuk, Sulaimaniyah and Erbil. The remaining four are from Baghdad.
“The majority of the artists do come from Iraqi Kurdistan, and that’s reflective of certain issues across Iraq,” concedes the exhibition’s co-curator, Sarah Perks. “We’re not saying that this is a full representation of all Iraqi art, just that here are nineteen artists living and working in Iraq, this is the art they’re creating at the moment. We’d like people to think a bit more widely and hopefully challenge some of their preconceptions.”
Adalet Garmiany, Perks’ co-curator, is a Kurdish refugee whose organisation, ArtRole, organised the first post-war art festival in Iraq, in Sulaimaniyah in 2009. According to Garmiany, some artists refused to participate in the show because of the mainly British and Kurdish organisers.
Amongst others who have not had their preconceptions challenged are, apparently, the visa applications staff at the British embassies in Amman and Beirut. A number of the featured artists, as well as several Iraqi academics, were invited to attend the recent exhibition opening. All were denied entry to the UK – part of a growing trend attributable to tightened visa regulations which, Perks suggests, could have serious implications for artistic freedom and interaction. “I don’t know why they didn’t give me a visa,” laments Julie Adnan, a photographic artist from Kirkuk.
According to Adnan and colleague Jamal Penjweny, from Sulaimaniyah, Iraqi artists are trying to use the internet to communicate – both abroad and with other artists within the country. But “unfortunately we do not have a good community of artists now in Iraq because most of the good Iraqi artists left Iraq during Saddam’s period and some after Iraq war because of the violence left the country,” says Penjweny.
Contemporary Art Iraq is at Conerhouse until 20 June.
Sarah Irving is a freelance writer based in Manchester.
More: Culture, Exhibition, Features
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