Art against the odds: on two recent trips to Iraq, the author found that artists are continuing to make work despite the massive upheaval in their country

Art in America, June-July, 2004 by Steven Vincent

What is the future for Iraqi art? Given the near-constant violence that grips Baghdad, the city's contemporary artists seem more concerned with keeping out of harm's way than with breaking new esthetic ground. Recently, I visited the College of Fine Arts to see how younger students were reacting to the sudden changes in their country, only to find tepid, unadventurous abstraction and portraiture--not surprising, perhaps, given the rise of anti-secular Islamist parties in Iraq and their antipathy to avant-garde experimentation. "Students these days are looking more toward religion than art," says painter Sabbar Yassim Hussin, who makes respectable abstract paintings but sells conventional landscapes often featuring bucolic scenes set along the Tigris of Euphrates rivers, "in order to support myself." With Iraq's recent history of tyranny and wars--and the present chaos that comprises terrorist violence, reactionary insurgencies and political and economic uncertainty--it will probably take years for Iraqi artists to come to grips with the changes affecting their country.

"First we have to discover our identity," Al-Safi remarks. "Before, Saddam told us we were Arabs of Muslims. Now he's gone, and we have to open the door to ourselves, to learn who we are and what it means to be Iraqi."

Author: Steven Vincent is a freelance journalist who writes about politics and art.