Tamara Chalabi

Just ten days after Baghdad s fall in 2003, Tamara Chalabi arrived in the city after a lifetime in exile finally entering the homeland she d known only through stories and her own imagination. Investigating four generations of her family s history at the forefront of Iraqi society, Chalabi offers a rich portrait of Middle Eastern life and a provocative look at a lost Iraq. Unforgettable characters provide glimpses of the end of the Ottoman Empire, the birth of the Iraqi state, the flowering of the Paris of the Middle East, and Iraq s descent into chaos. At once intimate and magisterial, Chalabi s memoir of return and reclamation vividly captures the rich history of a country shattered by war and a family that has never forgotten its past. "

Four Generations of My Family in Iraq

Late for Tea at the Deer Palace

Morad Montazami

-First complete overview of Latif al Ani's work Latif al Ani (born 1932, Baghdad) is known as the father of Iraqi photography. He was the first to capture cosmopolitan life in Iraq from the 1950s to the '70s. His black and white images represent a unique visual archive of the country during its 20th-century heyday. Al Ani photographed Iraq's vibrant culture in all its abundance and complexity; as well as documenting the country's westernised everyday life, political culture and industry, he also captured images of Iraq from the air for a British-owned oil company. Later, under Saddam Hussein's oppressive regime, Al Ani ceased photographing. For a long time, nothing was heard of the artist. Today, his images provide testimony of an era long gone. In 2015 Al Ani was presented with the Prince Claus Award, given annually by the Dutch Royal Family. In the same year he exhibited his work at the Venice Biennale in the Iraq Pavilion. This widely praised exhibition focused on works from the early period of his career and showed how Al Ani saw his country jump impatiently towards modernity while at the same time holding on to its traditions. The publication is introduced by an interview with Latif al Ani by Tamara Chalabi, the president of the Ruya Foundation in Iraq. It also contains an essay by Iranian Morad Montazami, curator of Middle Eastern Art at Tate Modern, London. Montazami puts Al Ani's work into the broader context of the modernization of Iraq, as well as the architecture, archaeology and the development of photography and visual culture in the country. Contents: Interview with Latif al Ani (by Tamara Chalabi); Essay by Morad Montazami

Latif Al Ani

Philippe Van Cauteren

This compelling book is the result of a project intended to visually communicate the hardships endured by Iraqi communities. Utilizing art materials donated to camps by the Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Iraq, these 350 drawings were created by some of the country's 1.8 million refugees, providing a necessary outlet for their immense suffering and struggles associated with being temporarily displaced from their vocations as lawyers, teachers, farmers, and mothers. Originally presented as an exhibition at the 2015 Venice Biennale, this publication features a large group of these drawings exclusively selected by the artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Harnessing the power of visual art as a means for both personal expression and socio-political awareness, this innovative book represents the humanistic effort to provide a voice for the underrepresented and their unimaginable strife. Mercatorfonds is donating all profits from the sale of this book to the refugee camps in Iraq.

Drawings of Refugees in Iraq Selected by Ai Weiwei

Traces of Survival

Paolo Colombo

Natasha Gasparian

Commissioned by the Ruya Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Iraq and published on the occasion of the 58th Venice Biennale, Fatherland presents the work of Kurdish Iraqi artist Serwan Baran and his investigation of the concept of ?fatherland? as opposed to what we traditionally understand as ?motherland.? Mixing curatorial texts by Tamara Chalabi and Natasha Gasparian with a series of poems and original letters from the 1980s written by Iraqi soldiers and collected by the artist during the years, Fatherland is both a reflective document that echoes Baran?s work and a commentary on the masculine and paternalistic dimension of the political culture in Iraq, a country dominated by men who have often enacted oppressive ideologies. 00Exhibition: Iraqi pavilion, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (11.05.-24.11.2019).

Tamara Chalabi

About

Books

Join the club