Thinking with Occupied Iraq, 1941-1945: On Forms and Freedom

What city will be the next center of advanced art? We've heard this question before. But circa 1941, with Paris occupied, the answer was undecided-and in Baghdad, artists, soldiers, and former prisoners of war (who were themselves also artists and soldiers), grappled with what seemed to be a civilizational question about terms for keeping the city and the self open for avant-garde work. Crucially, with British forces occupying Iraq at the same time, declaring a cause of freedom while suppressing Iraqi political activity, the immanence of incarceration proved a salient factor in creative practice: a theme, a shape, a fate. Working backwards from the 1953 maquette for a monument to the Unknown Political Prisoner devised by the great Iraqi modernist Jewad Selim, the talk delves into problems of form, freedom, and futurity arising from occupied Iraq, 1941 to 1945, under a threat of enemy alienation that we might recognize as a 20th century condition.

Anneka Lenssen is Associate Professor of Global Modern Art at the University of California, Berkeley. Her publications include a monograph on modern painting and politics in Syria (2020) and a co-edited volume, Modern Art in the Arab World: Primary Documents (2018). This talk is drawn from a current book project.

Free and open to the public.