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Anahit Sarkes |
War in Iraq through the eyes of an artist
Four Iraqi and two British artists have contributed works to an exhibition dealing with the war in Iraq, writes Simon Wroe
TWO years ago, Anahit Sarkes went back to Iraq. The journalist and artist had waited 30 years to return, since the rise of the Ba’ath party had forced her into exile.
“My dream has always been to go back and live in my country,” she said. “But when I got there it felt like a different planet. The streets were filled with American soldiers, the buildings I had grown up with were destroyed; there was all this chaos.”
“I had to ask myself: ‘Is this my country?’ It was not the Iraq I knew, it was not even the Iraq of Saddam – it was worse. I saw the result of war through different eyes, and I realised there are no happy endings in war. That is why we are against it.”
Ms Sarkes is one of six artists (four Iraqi and two British) who have contributed their interpretations of the Iraq conflict to a new exhibition at the Candid Arts Trust Gallery at the Angel, Islington.
Organiser and artist Tanya Tier says the exhibition’s roots go back as far as the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
She says: “I was disgusted with the killing, like millions of other people, but I think we were all in shock for the first couple of months.
“I was feeling things I couldn’t put into words, so I began making art. I think art is the most powerful statement about war you can make.”
Although some of the Iraqi members of the group already knew each other, it was only when they met Tanya and fellow British artist Lou McKeever through an online artist’s forum that the ‘Birds of War’ project was born.
All of the artists, whether Iraqi or not, have grown up in the shadow of war.
“We all bring our background to our work,” says Ms Tier. “Although we’ve all lived through similar experiences, we’re all bringing our own interpretations to the show.” Ms Tier, who was just eight years old living in Jordan when the Six Day War took place in 1967.
She adds: “War stays with you. Always. The hairs on the back of my neck still stand up when I hear a car backfire.”
Anahit, whose current work explores the transitional themes of life and death in the Arabic myth of Ishtar’s journey, agrees.
“My generation has witnessed war from when we were born until now,” she says.
“Palestine, Lebanon – we are still in the middle of it. My family still live in Iraq now. It’s a big part of my life.
“It always comes through in my work, even when I’m not thinking about it. Everything is related to it.”
At times the exhibition attacks the usual suspects (Bush, Blair, Rumsfeld and so on) with satiric gusto; but it is perhaps most affecting in its quieter moments, when it portrays the deep sense of loss felt by the Iraqi people.
In ‘Postcards from Mesopotamia’, Iraqi national Firyal Al-Adhamy attempts to figuratively recreate the priceless artefacts of the Baghdad Museum, destroyed during the allied forces’ invasion in 2004.
She paints exquisite pictures of the Abyssinian stone and ancient mosaics which US tanks crushed as they stormed the city.
Al-Adhamy believes that by trying to bring these relics back in her copies she is keeping the original alive in some way; that her gesture, though small, is preserving scraps of culture for posterity.
“Birds of War” is not on for long, but its
voices, and their message, will last a lot longer.
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