Through the Lens Gallery Talk: Curators and Artists in Conversation

This lecture will take place in person at ISAW.

Registration is required at THIS LINK.

Please join us as Roberta Casagrande-Kim, Co-curator of ISAW’s Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq exhibition, hosts a conversation with Pedro Azara (Barcelona University) and artists Nadine Hattom and Mahmoud Obaidi as they discuss the genesis of this project. Pedro, Nadine, and Mahmoud will address the themes of the exhibition, discuss the contemporary artworks on display, and evaluate the role of photography in the depiction and understanding of ancient Iraq.

Pedro Azara, dr. architect, professor of aesthetics at the Technical Superior School of Architecture in Barcelona (Spain), and Head of the Department of Theory and History of Architecture. Curator of the From Ancient to Modern. Archaeology and Aesthetics exhibition at the ISAW in 2015.  Senior Getty Grant in 1998, and Gerda Henkel Stiftung Grant (Düsseldorf) in 2010.

Nadine Hattom (born Baghdad, Iraq) grew up in Abu Dhabi, UAE, before migrating to Australia. Hattom studied Photomedia at the College of Fine Arts, Sydney, and is now based in Berlin. Hattom has exhibited at the 57th Venice Biennale Iraq Pavilion (2017), Arti et Amicitiae, Amsterdam (2017), Fotomuseum, Antwerp (2017), and the Marrakech Biennale 6th Edition (2016).

Mahmoud Obaidi is an Iraqi-Canadian artist, who received his BA in Fine Art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Baghdad in 1990. The following year, he left Iraq and spent a number of years without a permanent home, travelling around the world, eventually landing in Doha and Beirut where he currently lives and works. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 was a watershed moment for Obaidi, where he witnessed the destruction of the Baghdad—his home for much of his life. From that moment, he saw how Iraq’s story became written by Americans (rather than Iraqis) and it represented the death of his ability and desire to return to his country.

This lecture is given in conjunction with ISAW's exhibition Through the Lens: Latif Al Ani’s Visions of Ancient Iraq. This exhibition and its accompanying catalogue were made possible by generous support from the Violet Jabara Charitable Trust and the Leon Levy Foundation. Additional funding was provided by Joyce F. Menschel and Mr. and Mrs. Lawrence Tucker.

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