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