Creativity in the midst of conflict
Tamara Chalabi: The very fact that Iraq has a presence in Venice is a huge statement. But Iraq is not unique in this; there are many places dealing with questions of art and creativity in the midst of conflict. It may not sit well with the glitz and glamour of the art world, but art produced in such circumstances goes to the heart of the human condition. In Iraq — be it in Baghdad or Kurdistan or the south — there is no art market to speak of. And the few scattered galleries are not galleries in the internationally understood sense of the word. They don’t represent specific artists and they don’t understand the role that a gallery assumes in taking on an artist.
Then there are the art schools, which are state-run, their curriculums unchanged since the 1970s. They function like turn-of-the-century beaux-arts schools. And even that style of teaching has been degraded because of the security situation: you can’t have nude models for life drawing, for example. One thing that has changed since [the US-led invasion of Iraq in] 2003 is that you now see lots of angry, rebellious students, all with an interesting sense of fashion, and all at war with the faculty. That is a very healthy thing. But the faculty remains bureaucratic, almost Stalinist, completely cut off from trends in contemporary art today.
Source: www.christies.com