“The Deep End”, 2015
Mixed media on canvas
Who has the right to the seas and to safety?
Who has the right to the air above us?
Military aircraft carriers are nuclear-powered warships, as long as 24-floor buildings, and can carry more than 60 military warplanes, and massive amounts of ammunition.
The “warships” are stationed in the same waters the refugees use to flee the lands on which their bombs are dropped. On overloaded rubber boats, everyday lives are risked, smuggled, extorted, traumatized, and sometimes lost… Nameless. Numbers.
In 2015 alone, the seas brought forth 881,552 displaced people mostly from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq.
The refugee crisis is larger than life. Every cause has an effect.
I just came back from a 3-day residency at Wesleyan University. It was a great experience, I got to speak to many students and hear their stories and their reactions to my work. I completed the residency with this site-specific artwork. Read more about it below.
“Divide and Conquer” is a way to bring home the idea of both the physical and metaphorical walls that we put up to separate people. It is a site-specific photo manipulation re-imagining the Wesleyan University campus. The walls in the artwork are located at the Al Mustansiriya University campus in Baghdad, photographed by Iraqi photographer Ahmad Mousa, also a student at the University. The walls completely surround his campus, an imposed barrier that makes mobility very difficult, and a daily reminder of the precarious security situation in the country. After the 2003 invasion of Iraq by US and allied forces, “blast walls” were erected all over Baghdad, physically separating neighborhoods and creating divisions in the social fabric of the city.
The title refers to the military strategy of divide and conquer, but also implies the will to conquer the challenges and divisions we face in our every day lives, in any society. For what is struggle without hope?
Dedicated to Deah Barakat, Yusor Abu-Salha and Razan Abu-Salha of Chapel Hill.
Sundus Abdul Hadi is an Iraqi-Canadian multimedia artist and co-founder of The Medium / www.wearethemedium.com
Ahmad Mousa is an Iraqi photographer born in 1991. He is the founder of Everyday Iraq, an open mobile photography project on Instagram (@everydayiraq) and a contributor on @everydaymiddleeast.
Photograph of the Wesleyan University Usdan courtyard by Hira Jafri.
As part of Muslim Women’s Voices at Wesleyan.
(Click images for slideshow)
“Souls Land: Closing” (2010)
Artist book: mixed media on canvas (24 pages)
This artist book is a visual storytelling journey with an open narrative, allowing the viewer with the chance to project their own story within it’s pages. Made using my photographs of Iraq from 2004 and 2009, the book offers glimpses into Iraq through my eyes. However, it is more than a picture book. It functions as a counter-image to much of what was shown about Iraq in the mainstream media. It also presents a personal quest for identity and belonging, representing the symbolic closing of a chapter; of acceptance, and healing.
* I decided to release the digital version of this book in light of the latest violence in Iraq. My thoughts and prayers are with my people, who are yet again suffering another war.
NUQAT lecture part 1 : “The Long Way ‘Home’: Art, Change and Imagination”
(Part 2 below)
I had a great experience at the Nuqat conference in Kuwait a few months ago. Check out some of the other lectures in their YouTube channel.
NUQAT lecture part 2 : “The Long Way ‘Home’: Art, Change and Imagination”
I’ll be giving both a lecture and a workshop at the NUQAT conference in November, in Kuwait. Come if you’re there!
I was on AlJazeera’s episode of “The Stream” alongside a handful of interesting Iraqis discussing “Iraqi Youth on the Rise”
Enjoy the discussion, we only skim the surface given the time limit!
#Iraq #10years