Category: Iraq
-
Joyce Dallal is a multi-disciplinary artist based in Los Angeles. Her work encompasses a variety of media from small prints and paintings to large installations and public art. The themes that surface in her work are those of collective and personal history, migration, memory, and the evolution of contemporary cultural identity. A first-generation American born…
-
(1954 – 2015) Born in Baghdad, Iraq, in 1954, the esteemed artist Wasma Al-Agha graced the world with her creative spirit. As the wife of fellow artist Mahoud Ahmed, she embarked on a lifelong journey that left an indelible mark on the realm of Iraqi art. Her early years were devoted to education; in Baghdad,…
-
(1908 – 2005) Madiha Umar was a pioneer and the first artist to incorporate Arab calligraphy with modern abstract art. Her work is considered to be the precursor to the Hurufiyya movement. She was born in Aleppo, Syria in 1908 from Circassian father and Syrian mother but she moved to Iraq being a young girl.…
-
(1944 – 1993) Layla Al-Attar was an Iraqi artist and painter who became the Director of the Iraqi National Art Museum. Through her art, al-Attar expressed ideals that attempted to recognize the importance of women in all spheres of society. Al-Attar graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1965, and was among…
-
Born in 1937 in Karbala Governorate, Iraq, Bahija Al-Hakim was a prominent Iraqi artist, celebrated for her contributions to the world of visual arts. Her life was woven with familial bonds and a love for art that left an indelible mark on her journey.In the embrace of a large and loving family, Bahija grew up…
-
(1941 – 2004) Nuha Al-Radi was an Iraqi diarist, ceramicist and painter and noted author of the Baghdad Diaries which vividly recounts the horror of living through the first Gulf War. She was born into a distinguished Iraqi family which included Mahmud Shevket Pasha, Prime Minister of the Ottoman Empire. In 1919, her father Mohammed…
-
(1950 – 2019) Zaha Hadid’s pioneering vision redefined architecture for the 21st century and captured imaginations across the globe. Each of her projects transformed notions of what can be achieved in concrete, steel, and glass; combining her unwavering optimism for the future and belief in the power of invention with advanced design, material and construction…
-
Naziha Salim(1927 – 2008) An Iraqi artist, educator and author, described by the country’s president, Jalal Talabani, as “the first Iraqi woman who anchored the pillars of Iraqi contemporary art”. Not a great deal of scholarly attention has been given to the cultural and artistic lives of female artists. In the case of Naziha Salim,…
-
Iraqi London-based painter, ceramist, and sculptor who grew up between the USA (1955-68), Baghdad, where Architecture studies took place in the 1970s, and London where residence has been established since 1982, with intermittent stays in Paris. This diverse background significantly influenced the artist’s creative output. Within an aesthetic shaped by architectural discipline, a network of…
-
Hanaa Malallah studied Fine Art in Baghdad with an emphasis on graphics and painting. In 2005 her thesis concerning the logic order in Mesopotamian drawing gained her a PhD in the Philosophy of Painting. She has taught and lectured widely at several faculties of the University of Fine Arts in Baghdad. At the end of…
-
Farah Salem is a Kuwaiti-Iraqi Chicago-based multidisciplinary artist and art therapist. Her studio and art therapy practices are bridged by socially engaged artistic and therapeutic practices. In her studio practice, she finds subtle affinities between geologic time, somatic movement, the human psyche, gendered trauma, ceremonial music/dance and healing rituals from the Arabian Peninsula. Through relational…