By JUDIT NEURINK
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Under Saddam Hussein, artists had struggled against persecution for their work. When he fell 10 years ago, freedom came. But it did not bring the change that was expected.
Artists like Hasan Nassar, who struggled under Saddam not to become part of his Baath Party propaganda machine, say that art then was controlled by the Iraqi government, but also officially patronized. Now, they complain, there is no support from the authorities; and there is no market for art.
Artists say the result is that Iraqi art, once highly regarded and even sought by some collectors, is struggling for survival.
Nassar, a 42-year-old painter, sculptor and graphic designer from Baghdad, says that since Saddam’s fall artists can practice relatively freely. But they cannot earn a living from art: Baghdad hardly has any art galleries left, tourists that used to buy art do not come anymore and only a few Iraqi artists are able to exhibit and sell internationally in Dubai, Amman and Beirut.
Iraqi artists now try to find other jobs and income, Nassar says. They work in the media, make TV documentaries, work as taxi drivers and try to peddle their work in the streets. And some are returning to the old methods of seeking political patronage, as parties copy some of the ways of the Baathists.
“Some artists work on party propaganda,’’ Nassar says. He finds that the new Iraqi parties hardly understand what art is about. “Shiite and Sunni politicians say they support art, but they only see it as decoration.”
Religion has infused art, like it has permeated most Iraqi society. Nassar recounts the story of a respected colleague who started painting Shiite saints: “He told me that his daughter was healed after his wife prayed to them for her, and that he does not paint for the money.’’
Nassar is critical of the quality of art in Iraq, saying it has not improved since Saddam’s fall in 2003. He set up an organization, a gallery and a website (www.artiniraq.net) to help Iraqi art forward. “When I collected art to put on the website, I could not even find enough of sufficient quality,” he laments.
That is because everything in Iraq is of poor quality, and yet expensive. “During the embargo (after 1991), we did not have money but everything was cheap. Now, it is all expensive, and we do not have a private sector to get any income,” Nassar says.
This has led to many more artists creating abstract art than one would expect in a free environment. “Under the Baathists, the artists created abstract works because that was safe. Now, they do it because it is easy,” Nassar says. “We also see people who have no work trying to earn some money in this way.”
His criticism about the poor quality of present day art is shared by 69-year-old Kurdish sculptor and painter, Ismael Khayat.
“The new art after 2003 was not good,’’ he says in his atelier in the city of Sulaimani in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region.
Kurdish artists have had an advantage, he says, because they have been able to remain in contact with the world since their de facto autonomy in 1991. “We saw new, young artists who wanted to produce quickly. They needed the time to develop. And they are doing so, slowly.”
He notices that Kurdish artists long to be famous, although they still need to grow. “We need a plan to develop the arts. The government is not doing enough,” Khayat complains.
He still remembers the environment for artists under Saddam: They could not talk about Anfal, Saddam’s genocide against the Kurds, or about Halabja, where 5,000 innocent Kurds died in a chemical attack by Saddam’s regime in the closing weeks of the 1980-88 war with Iran. But the constraints did not stop him.
“I was relatively free because my work was not realistic. Some understood that a body without a head was symbol for Halabja. I called it ‘dream’ or ‘long sleep.’”
Now he paints stones from Halabja with the figurines of birds and women that are his symbols. “I want people to have a piece of Halabja at home, to remind them that this should never happen again.”
He had exhibitions all over Iraq, and his fame made it easier to refuse some of the Baathists’ requests. Not so Man Ahmed, a 43-year-old sculptor from Kirkuk. He worked on a number of sculptures for the Iraqi authorities. “You felt like an instrument, you had to make what they wanted,” he says.
After 1991, he was asked in secret to make a sculpture of the Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani. He was given materials and a secret working place in Erbil. “Two days after I was back in Kirkuk, the Baath party office phoned.” They knew all about his work for the Kurds, and told him to make a sculpture of Saddam. A refusal was not possible. He started, working as slowly as possible. “It felt indescribably bad. The good thing was that it was still in the workplace when Saddam fell.” he remembers.
Unlike the many sculptures of Saddam, Mani’s art made for the Baathists has survived the changeover: Television stations use his sculptures as the icons for various towns.
Ten years after Saddam fell, Mani’s Republic in Kirkuk and his Girl from Diyala in Diyala remain two iconic symbols.
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