Ghosts from the land of milk and honey: Iraqi art finds haven at New York gallery

08 April 2008

Marie-Helene Rousseau

Inter Press Service

NEW YORK: Somewhere in Baghdad, members of the same family watch explosions going off - not through the comforting, detached glare of a television screen but through the frame of a window. Immortalized in stark black and white, these two photographs of everyday life in Iraq confront visitors to the Pomegranate Art Gallery in the heart of New York City's Soho district. Behind the lens is Canadian-born Iraqi photojournalist Farah Nosh.

The gallery, the only one in New York City to specialize in modern Middle Eastern art, was established by Jewish Iraq sculptor Oded Halahmy. The Pomegranate has received much media attention for its acclaimed first exhibit, "The Iraqi Phoenix: Ashes to Art." Its current exhibit, "Contemporary Iraqi Art," features the work of 16 Iraqi artists, many of whom have fled Iraq and now live scattered across Europe and the Middle East.

Nosh's intimate portrayals of the time she spent in Baghdad living with relatives stand out in an exhibit largely consisting of abstract and figurative art - including Qasim Sabti, Nazar Yahya and Dia Azzawi on the one hand, Naziha Rashid and Amal Alwan on the other.

Although Nosh is the only photojournalist in the exhibit, her work speaks to the dual struggle she says much of the art in this post-Saddam Hussein category represents - the artists' healing, while at the same time dealing with the fresh wounds inflicted by the war.

For Nosh, a 2003 journey to Iraq was the first time she came into direct contact with her heritage. Growing up with her Iraqi parents in Vancouver, she said she "didn't have a sense of being Iraqi." She was fresh out of school in 2002, when the US-led overthrow of the Taliban government in Afghanistan had already taken place.

"[The invasion of] Iraq was being talked about but no one believed it would happen," she said. In September 2002, she left home to cover the country's uncertain future. "I have a really strong emotional connection to what is happening," she continued, "I'm drawn to being in the Middle East."

Nosh decided to join her relatives to get a more intimate sense of what they were going through. The experience led to the series of photographs, "The Other Side of War."

"I don't think they really understood what I was doing," Nosh said of her family, "but they would make fun of me for having my camera everywhere."

Although Iraqis are in their homes, the war seeps through, Nosh said, speaking of the time explosions went off in front of her family's window.

"Family I" captures this moment, showing her aunts and cousins staring out the window, their worried reflections in an adjacent mirror. They were watching Iraqi Army officials picking up their dead, scrambling through the chaos taking place on the street where her cousins used to walk to school. Sadness pervaded the house. "It was hard to have happy and light moments in the house," she said. "There was a heaviness."

Qasim Sabti is the only artist of the 16 who remains in Baghdad. His work showcases some other "casualties" of the 2003 bombings - the books that were destroyed in the looting of Baghdad's Academy of Fine Arts, where Sabti had both studied and taught. Sabti took the "survivors," the book covers, and made collages. In the exhibit's catalogue, he refers to his work as representing the resilience of cultural life.

The destruction of this cultural heritage is a theme of many of the artist's works. Echoes of lost and desecrated art can be found in Hanna Mallalah's abstract piece, "The Looting of the Museum of Baghdad" - a wood canvas that she cut and burned, bearing the traces of Iraqi ceramic tiles painted on by Mallalah.

Of the artists in this post-Saddam era, Esam Pasha perhaps best represents the transition to US occupation. At the end of Saddam's rule, Pasha was the first artist to paint over a mural depicting him in Baghdad, replacing it with his own artistic interpretation of Iraq's history. Coincidentally, Pasha also obtained a visa to the US. He now resides in Connecticut.

As buildings burned and bombs fell around him in April 2003, Pasha had run out of art supplies, so he turned to melting crayons to make his series, "Tears of Wax."

In stark contrast to Nosh's wartime reportage and Pasha's portraits of molten crayon, the art of Amal Alwan and Naziha Rashid is reminiscent of a more peaceful time in Baghdad. Rashid's nostalgia comes through in her paintings of the Iraqi villages and countryside of the past.

Oded Halahmy also treasures his memories of Iraq, referring to it as "the cradle of civilization, the land of milk and honey." His memories of Iraq are also free of the sectarian strife that has bubbled over today.

"The Jewish community was living in harmony. There was no fighting between Sunnis and Shiites," he said. His memories are fitting in an exhibition featuring Sunnis, Shiites, Jews, and Kurds. "My aim is to bring all ethnic groups in one space."

In his Soho gallery, Halahmy still clings to memories of pomegranates and palm trees. "I am out of Iraq," he says, "but Iraq remains in me for life."