Abu-Ghraib--and Art under fire

[rodeodance]

Art under fire
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,1356487,00.html

Under Saddam, Iraqi artists were forced to produce works that glorified the leader and put him at the centre of everything. Now they are less constrained - and the subject they most want to depict is the violence all around them. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports

Monday November 22, 2004
The Guardian

Man In Abu-Ghraib, a marble figurine by Iraqi artist Karim Khalil.

Photo: Ghaith Abdul-Ahad/Getty Images

In a dark corner of a dingy courtyard, four stocky warriors with disproportionately tiny heads and huge, muscular arms stand with their backs against the wall. They wear thick vests - like flak jackets or breastplates - decorated with circles and strips, and knee-high boots with metal caps. Weapons dangle from their waists. One wears a two-horned helmet and carries a round shield. A huge crescent-shaped sword rests against his shoulder.

They look like a jihadi group posing for a beheading video or the latest fashion show in an American sex shop; in fact they are 10cm-high bronze figurines called The Invaders, the latest in a series of sculptures produced by an Iraqi artist trying to come to terms with the everyday realities of his life in Baghdad. "The first three are American marines, the fourth is a Mongol warrior," says Karim Khalil, 45, an Iraqi painter-sculptor. "They have all occupied Iraq and destroyed its culture. But while the Mongols were primitive savages who burned the libraries, the Americans, who call themselves a civilised nation, stood watching as the Iraqi museums were looted.".....

[indigobusiness]

1. Gain/loss ...the last 2 paragraphs are ironic.

"Iraq is filled with negative stories: everything is bad; the health system is bad, electricity is scarce, water is polluted, the police are corrupt and all these things are oxygen for a satirist," said one of the actors, whose face was covered in fake blood.

"The art of satire is something new in our country," said Jalal Kamil, the leading Iraqi actor and director who is behind this series, "and the potential is great. For the first time we can work without fear of the censors." He went on and on about this great potential, the great drama that can be found anywhere in Iraq these days. Then, as he left he turned and said, "What I have learned, however, is that I am not allowed to make jokes about the Americans or to criticise the occupation."