Ayad Alkadhi

IRAQ/USA, 1972

A figure hangs from a noose in a field of black paint, an arresting image with line after seemingly endless line of curious, white-painted Arabic calligraphy. Another figure, a body shrouded in white and set into a dark space bordered by a field of elegant calligraphy, lies anonymously in a coffin, never to receive proper burial. And a black-and-white painting of a handsome young man, presumably the Iraq-born artist himself, appears either intent or afraid to speak of his personal story as fiery orange and red lines of calligraphy stretch from one side of the canvas to the other, a gestural cacophony of words overwhelming his mouth.

The newest paintings by Ayad Alkadhi, whose earlier thick, carved calligraphic paintings celebrated Baghdad’s rich cultural tradition, have flattened over the years and now respond to the U.S. war in Iraq–the tens of thousands of unreported Iraqi casualties, the looted and destroyed institutions and the tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib.

The role of the artist in times of war, historian Howard Zinn wrote, “is to transcend conventional wisdom, to transcend the word of the establishment, to transcend the orthodoxy, to go beyond and escape what is handed down by the government or what is said in the media.”

Alkadhi offers an incisive commentary on the Iraqi death toll, infusing and sometimes juxtaposing iconography of Near Eastern and Western politics and religion. He belongs to a generation of artists seeking to retain their ethnic identity while assimilating into Western culture. His use of Arabic newspaper on mixed-media canvases, as well as in his own calligraphy, connects traditional Arabic to the cutting edge of contemporary art. The collision produces powerful images that ultimately express the artist’s perceived existence as a U.S. resident constantly explaining his thoughts on the war, Saddam Hussein and the U.S. occupation of Iraq. “I should be painting how I feel,” he says.

“After Abu Ghraib, something switched. Part of survival is to detach. I thought it was an art installation, but it wasn’t. I tried to justify the action of the Americans.” By that standard, Abu Ghraib, he says, was “almost Disneyesque. It’s the modern face of the Spanish Inquisition, when all humanity destructs and one can insult another just because of where they come from. It was so visually compelling.”

The intensity of his subjects matches the sophistication of his final pictures, which are at once provocative, honestly raw and aesthetically magnetic. Viewers want to read and understand the calligraphy, all of which holds meaning.

Looser calligraphy (Arabic graffiti) and abstracted figures also distinguish Alkadhi’s recent work. His earlier photo-based paintings and meticulous calligraphy were too exacting for the incomprehensible blur of so many casualties and atrocities in his homeland. Abstraction offers a measure of privacy, overdue consideration, even dignity.

Steven Biller