Iraqi Art Show

Today the embassy had a exhibit of work from local Iraqi artists.  Work came in from quite a few of them.  Most of the pieces, as you can see, were 2D (paintings and some prints), while there were also a few small bronze sculptures.  A good crowd showed up and sales were strong.  Actually, sales were better than I've ever seen at our River District Artists Studio Stroll in Asheville.  Maybe the RDA'ers need to bring their stuff over here ....

The Iraqi art world, like everything else, was hit pretty hard by Saddam's regime and then by the insurgency.  Saddam's thugs were much like any thugs in power: they barely tolerated artists at best, and terrorized them unmercifully at worst.  However, the art world managed to survive as artists figured out ways to continue working while not attracting too much attention from the authorities.  Things were very different during the insurgency.  The hard-liners didn't tolerate art of any stripe that didn't agree with their extremely narrow view of Islam.  Way too many artists were killed or driven out of the country.  A few have remained, and some of the best of them participated in the Embassy show.

I met and talked with two of them.  Both were very gracious individuals, and both are very good at what they do.  Both are abstract artists as well ... here they're called "plastic" artists, which took me a bit of time to adjust to.  Actually, most of the painters in the show were "plastic" artists ... there was only a little representational or figurative work.  

So we talked for a while and compared thoughts about art and art-making.  We took what seemed like a couple dozen photos of each other - the interpreter took some of the three of us, somebody else took pictures of the three of us and the interpreter, each of the artists took pictures of each of us and the interpreter ... you get the idea.  I think Iraqis like pictures as much as the Japanese do, and almost as much as my daughter-in-law does.  

But I will not post any of those pictures on this blog, nor will I tell you who I talked to.  These two artists are taking a risk by associating with Americans.  There are still a lot of extremists here who can, and do, track down people who work with Americans and threaten or kill them.

Someday, though ...