The plunder that accompanied Iraq’s wars, stripped the country of its cultural heritage and plunged Iraqi artists into isolation but there is a non-profit organisation that is doing everything to ‘rebuild,’ in a sense, some of this critical infrastructure by combating the isolation Iraqi artists experience today. Where there was void, sounds are once again being heard.
Known as Sada in Arabic, Echo was founded by Iraqi-born Rijin Sahakian last year with the aim of raising the profile of contemporary Iraqi art. Armed with a masters degree in contemporary art and cultural policy from New York University, through her new initiative, Sahakian is actively putting her studies into practice.
Sada participated in Iraq’s Wounded Water pavilion at the 2011 Venice Biennale - only the second time the country had done so and ending a 35-year absence at the event - with a panel entitled Fluid Resilience and a film screening by Oday Rasheed, highlighting the struggles of three young artists in Baghdad’s militarised environment. “We are basically trying to provide a system of support within a fragile and fragmented field,” she says.
Sahakian’s initiative earned Sada admirers. On October 26 an auction to benefit the organisation was held at Christie’s in Dubai. The work put on sale was cutting-edge and political, donated by six established Iraqi artists. There was Wafaa Bilal’s ‘…and Counting’, where the artist turned his body into a canvas, tattooing his back with a borderless map of Iraq filled with dots representing both Iraqi and American casualties. Tattooed in invisible ink, the Iraqi dots were only visible in black light. Then there was Jananne Al-Ani’s ‘Aerial I’ – taken from the series, The Aesthetics of Disappearance: A Land without People – a landscape print bearing traces of natural and man-made activity intended to simulate the desolate vantage point of military surveillance.
The Arab art market has grown vertiginously over the past decade. The most recent example, Ahmed Al Soudani’s ‘Baghdad I’, a painting depicting the moment when the monumental statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square was toppled in 2003, sold for over 1 million USD in October, setting a new record.
Though Sada devotes itself to helping Iraqi artists, Sahakian stresses that the importance of showing art is not where it comes from but its intrinsic value. “You cannot, for example, just be looking to show an artist from Iraq, thinking that solves the issue of visibility of art from war-torn countries. Art should not be categorised in this way, and tokenised… This oftentimes only promotes a fleeting, superficial interest in the work when what is needed is long-term investment,” she says. “It is important that we are a non-profit, as we do not want to be in a position of monetising artists or their work. That is really not the aim of Sada, and our activities are quite different from those of a gallery. One of Sada’s aims is to provide programs for young artists, long before any issue of their marketplace viability is relevant, and to introduce them to conceptual and other aesthetic ideas out of which compelling art can be thought up and made. ”
To help this happen, a bilingual web platform is being developed for next year, which will act as an archive for contemporary Iraqi artwork and serve as a research hub, connecting artists inside Iraq with those outside.
These days, Sada is busy organising multi-disciplinary art workshops, courses conducted in Arabic by internationally established artists, mostly of Iraqi origin, and live-streamed to art students at the Iraqi Independent Film Centre in Baghdad.
It’s Sahakian’s pride and joy; the 8-month long workshops add a cutting-edge twist to the idea of distance learning. “Artists conduct lectures from any point on the globe and students can ask questions and engage in conversation with teachers in real time,” she explains, “and the software enables videos, images of works, and texts to be seamlessly presented and downloaded by students.” It also perfectly illustrates the organisation’s name. “An echo is a measurement of distance between two points through sound,” Sahakian continues. “Within the terrain of Iraqi arts and culture, work, materials, archives and of course, people, are all over the globe. With our foundation, we aim to foster a convergence between these far-flung points, and to connect them and their reach, with an eye to the future.” Clearly heard at home, Sada’s echo is now beginning to reverberate around the world.
WHO Rijin Sahakian
WHAT Echo, a non-profit organisation supporting Iraqi artists and their works
FACT Echo is supported by New-York-based non-profit ArteEast and Dutch development organisation, the Hivos Foundation.
WHY This non-profit organisation’s mission is a noble one, namely to support the generation, presentation, and preservation of contemporary Iraqi art.
