Light
When Islamic State jihadist militants burned thousands of manuscripts from the central library of Mosul, close to the ancient capital of Nineveh and today Iraq’s second city, some recalled the words of the German poet Heinrich Heine: “Wherever they burn books, they will, in the end, also burn human beings.”
Landscape of Basrah (2014)
by Abdul Rheda Ali
The acts of barbarism continued with the destruction, documented and disseminated by video, of statues, busts and decorations of the palace of Sennacherib, which the Assyrian king, around 700 BC, wanted to build so big and so beautiful as to be the “palace without rival”: the inimitable.
Punishment (2014)
by Ahmed Hassan Nasser
The destruction of these truly inimitable works, testimony of one of the highest artistic expressions of the pre-classical world, is a lesion for the extraordinary land of Mesopotamia and for all mankind; it is the memory of our ancient civilizations that is demeaned.
Waiting Women (2014)
by Angham Mohammed Jawad
And the level of alarm is even higher because Islamic State not only destroys the works of art, but also sells the archaeological artefacts to finance its war.
In this tragic scenario, the Imago Mundi collection dedicated to Iraq, as well as an international promotion of so many deserving artists, is a response to the obscurantism of those who, in trying to delete Art and History, demean and nullify even themselves, their credo, and their future.
Untitled (2014)
by Bilal Basheer Taha
In the more than 140 10x12 cm works in the collection, the Iraqi artists show to the world a similar number of expressions of vitality, creative joy, beauty, respect for their culture and an ardent desire for normalcy.
Comic Army (2014)
by Wasfy Faleh
Untitled (2014) by Fareed Hassan Saleh
As if to say: look, Iraq is not just war and oil. It is history, art and culture, which in writing, in the zodiac, in medicine, have given so much to humanity. Here, in 4000 BC, the first libraries were opened in which the Sumerians, Assyrians and Babylonians amassed their clay tablets. In the city of Nineveh itself, the library of King Ashurbanipal was created, the largest of the ancient world, containing over twenty thousand tablets, including those bearing the narration of the Epic of Gilgamesh, the first epic poem in history. A cult of the preservation of knowledge that continued with the Arab civilization, during which, under the long reign of the Abbasids, the capital Baghdad came to have tens of libraries.
Contemporary Obelisk (2014) by Ferass Abdul Jabbar Abed
A historic land located between the Tigris and the Euphrates; today Iraq is still divided by tribal struggles, contradictions and difficulties after more than thirty years of war at more or less regular intervals. According to the report of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Iraq holds the fifth largest proved crude oil reserves in the world, is third for conventional oil reserves after Saudi Arabia and Iran and thirteenth for gas reserves, but its dependence on the riches of the land makes it difficult for the Iraqi economy to achieve steady growth.
Assumption Cities (2014) by Hasan Falih Salim Al Shawi
The main problems lie in both the non- implementation of a process of national reconciliation that would allow a constructive social and political dialogue between the different ethnic and religious components of the population (nearly 33 million people, more than 42% under the age of 14, comprising Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, in addition to minorities like the Turkomans and Christians), as well as the need to achieve a more equitable distribution of wealth.
Dream of Childhood (2014)
by Hassan Abdul-Sheheed
The presence of the Caliphate, extending to the territories of eastern Iraq conquered by jihadists, has made the region even more unstable and uncertain, further complicating the long-awaited return to normalcy.
Untitled (2014)
by Hassan Muhsen
The ongoing conflicts have made it difficult to create this collection, which attests to the will of Iraqi artists not to bow to fear and to bear witness to the drama of the country, making Imago Mundi a laboratory of ideas and a meeting place to construct a future society based on democracy and peace.
Stranger in my Homeland (2014) by Manhal Kheiralah Mohammed
The collection is an exciting artistic achievement - capable of embracing its Mesopotamian roots, the European avant-garde and contemporary social issues - and follows milestones like the exhibition “It Is What It Is: Conversations about Iraq”, held in New York in 2009, which brought the country to the attention of art critics worldwide, presenting the reality of the civil war through works like the carcass of a car destroyed by a bomb in Baghdad in 2007.
Untitled (2014)
by Rasha Hashim Sattar
Poet from my City (2014)
by Munaf Mohammed Khudayyer
Or the Venice Biennale in 2013, where “Welcome to Iraq”, the collective of the Iraqi pavilion, proposed works suspended between past and present, almost an appeal not to destroy once again the historical and natural beauty of the country.
°355 (2014)
by Qais E. Abdallah Aldorgey
In a land still marked by the civil war, the Imago Mundi Iraqi artists tell us how, day after day, art is a light that can illuminate the darkness, a reason for hope in a better future. Like the shepherds of the Iraqi poet Saadi Youssef, they too can say: “Today, we have given meaning to the earth....”
Luciano Benetton
Yellow and Blue (2014)
by Salman El-Basry
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