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Iraq in Venice

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Iraq and art aren't words that usually go together.

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Decades of war, of despotism and despair have seen to that.

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When you think how many catastrophes we've been through,

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through the ages, and yet we survived.

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What actually kept us going since civilisation started in this land

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is our culture.

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And culture is making a comeback in Iraq.

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For the first time since Saddam Hussein seized power some 35 years ago,

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Iraq has a presence at the prestigious Venice Biennale.

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It's the Olympics of art,

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where nations invite their artists to represent them on a world stage.

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Six artists offer a powerful insight into their country,

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from inside and from out.

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This is a story of exile, as well as belonging.

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HELICOPTER WHIRRS

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As the Palestinian writer Edward Said once said,

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"Most people are aware of one culture,

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"one setting, one home. Exiles are aware of at least two."

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"Everything they do in the new environment occurs

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"against the memory of it in the old."

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All these Iraqi artists live like that.

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In the land that has taken them in,

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and the land that they remember, and imagine.

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The first artist we meet lives in Finland,

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not necessarily where you'd expect to find an Iraqi.

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Abidin, that's the one.

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-Hello.

-I'm Alan.

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Hi, Adam, huh?

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-That's very, very welcoming.

-You know! It's my territory, my rules.

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-Come in.

-All right, thank you.

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'Adel's been here in Finland since the year 2000.'

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-So this is your studio?

-Yeah.

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I see it says, "Welcome to Baghdad" on the..

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-That's right, to create a small section of Baghdad here.

-Yes.

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I went to Baghdad 2004, by car from Jordan,

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so when I was entering Baghdad there was a the American checkpoint

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and there was this American soldier with the glasses

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and like typical American, you know, that you see in movies.

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And he, he told me, "Welcome to Baghdad."

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So it was like, are you kidding me here?

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It's my city, you know.

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When you get your own country invaded in this way,

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you start not to belong to that place any more, even if you are from there.

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Emigrating to Finland inspired one of Adel's video installations.

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Viewers look into a spy hole in a fridge.

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A man inside the fridge fires questions at them.

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What do you think about 11th September?

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Are you a Muslim? Sunni?

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Samantha Fox, do you know who she is?

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Did you see Baghdad burning?

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Those questions are real questions, actually,

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I used to hear them from people.

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I just gathered them, I didn't write any from my own.

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Bin Laden, where do you think he is right now?

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All these questions people ask me.

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Suicide bombers, what do you think about them?

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Where is Osama Bin Laden? Where is Saddam Hussein?

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I mean, how the hell I know? If the CIA doesn't know, how do you think I would know?

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How does it feel to ride a camel?

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So I could have asked you, how is the situation in Iraq right now?

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How IS the situation in Iraq right now?

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-Are you asking me right now?

-Yeah, sure.

-I have no idea.

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What do you think of Osama Bin Laden?

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LAUGHS

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-How does it feel to ride a camel?

-It feels good!

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I've done it myself, I think it feels good too.

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What are the things that Finland has brought to your work?

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Be free and think in a free way

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and do whatever I want and don't give a damn.

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Adel has re-imagined the propaganda songs of his youth.

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# Ooo-ooo

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# Ooo-ooo-oo... #

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If you are real in what you do and you believe in it,

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anybody will understand it, even if it's totally strange.

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These songs that made in '90s basically to flatter

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Saddam himself as a person.

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Like they were singing like, "We love you, we kill people for you,"

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it's like a kind of weirdo lover.

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We all used to sing these songs

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because they made them in a really nice melody.

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It's like really brainwashing. So, it felt to me like

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all of us in that time, we were like the cliche of a bimbo.

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We just repeat what we sang.

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But the lyrics are funny when you read them,

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like, "We will wipe America from the map." I mean, hello?!

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"We are swords and we only fit in your right hand.

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"By Allah, we owe our lives to your moustache."

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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-So if he shaves it, we'll all...

-It's all over!

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SINGING IN IRAQI

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My God, is that the original? The same song?

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The same song.

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'This is the real version, a strident propaganda song,

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'transformed by Adel into a sexy nightclub number.'

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-It's a nice song, actually, when you hear it.

-Yeah, sure.

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Saddam was really a scary guy.

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This guy created something in Iraq

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that you are afraid of even your friend might be a spy on you.

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That what made the society really like, not solid.

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You don't know who is your friend, who is your enemy.

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It's quite dangerous for you to go back to Iraq?

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Iraqis are funny, like I said, "So how's the situation there?"

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"Oh, it's really safe now. There is no problem

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"Just explosion here and there." It's like... You know, like, OK.

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Those guys who appear in these videos,

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kidnap for the sake of religion and Islam,

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and they have this Koranic phrases behind them.

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'I was asking myself - the benefit, in the end, goes to whom?'

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HE CHANTS

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'They're actually feeding, or giving more legitimacy,

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'to the occupier whenever they do these kinds of acts.'

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So I thought, why don't I shorten the whole thing?

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Bring that guy, make him sing to the American flag.

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# This land is your land

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# This land is my land

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# From California

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# To the New York island

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# From the redwood forests

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# To the Gulf Stream waters

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# All this land was made for you and me... #

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In New York City, Ahmed Alsoudani has had a meteoric rise to fame.

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So much so that he's being photographed

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for a spread in Vogue magazine.

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-Can we move the angle?

-Take it from that side.

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Take it from this side.

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It's a world away from Baghdad, where he was born and brought up.

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He left because he defaced a mural of Saddam Hussein.

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He had to make a run for it, and he hasn't been back since.

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'You know, when you're 19, 20,

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'you think you can change the world by doing such a funny thing.'

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After all these years, I have more freedom to damage the mural,

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in my painting. So it's a circle.

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It's funny to end up doing the same thing that I have done

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more than 20 years ago.

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My work is about chaos...

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and the suffering of human beings.

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And how...brutal and harsh the life that we've been dealing with.

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We pretend it's beautiful, but it's not.

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'The chaos, violence - this subject matter,

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'people have been dealing with it for many, many years.

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'And there is kind of an unwritten rule,

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'using earthy tones - dark, grey, colours.

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'They keep the viewer from communicating with the painting.

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'So I'm trying to do something a little bit different.

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'Of course, knowing these pieces are going to be in Venice,

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'I'm trying to do my best.

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'Hopefully, I will be done in the next month or so.'

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Ahmed calls himself an Iraqi-born American artist.

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'To represent a country officially, it's such a great thing.

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'I didn't train there, I studied here, but I spent more than half

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'of my life over there, and my mum and my family are still there,

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'so they update me with all these horrible things happening.

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'I try with all these difficulties to keep in my head a beautiful image.'

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I'm afraid to go over there, I don't want to damage the image in my head.

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Always I go back to my experience, and it's such a treasure,

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with all horrible things in it,

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but it's a good place to always go and dig.

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For the Venice Biennale,

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big league countries have permanent national pavilions.

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Newcomers have to find places on the fringes.

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Just round the corner from the Arsenale,

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this old house on a backwater will be the Iraqi pavilion.

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The curator of the show is Mary Angela Schroth,

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an American based in Rome.

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She's been negotiating with the Iraqi government for

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official recognition - tricky, when the country's still in disarray.

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OK, well, what can you say?

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She's teamed up with Ali Assaf, an Iraqi exile who also lives in Rome.

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It was Ali who first had the idea of bringing Iraq to Venice.

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We had always this desire to participate in Biennale Venice.

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And it was not possible because of our relation with the past regime.

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So we thought exactly in 2004 when things changed, we said,

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"OK, now, why not?

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"We have to do it, we can do it".

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So seven years' planning?

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Yeah, yeah - planning, thinking,

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talking with Mary Angela Schroth, the curator.

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She gave me very much energy and she said, OK, we risk,

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and we just open a door and we will see, maybe other doors will open.

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We were shown a few places. Some of them looked more like art galleries.

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The choice came to this, very simply, because when I walked in,

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it felt like an old Iraqi house.

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It actually brings back those memories.

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For us, it's like a symbol of an Iraqi house which is abandoned,

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like a family left because of war.

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For this reason, most of the rooms we kept as it is.

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They also decided on a theme for the group's show. Water - wounded water.

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Water is a resource with which Venice is awash,

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but it's perilously scarce in Iraq.

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Four months to go before the Venice show,

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and Walid Siti is working on the theme of water.

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Walid, hi.

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'He comes from Kurdistan, the mountainous north of Iraq.

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'The fountain head for the dry lands below.'

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-I see lots of mountains.

-That's right.

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Everything in this room seems to be a part of your memory,

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that history of yours.

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My family come from Iraq originally, my father left in '48,

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my mother left even earlier, and I've never been there.

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Interesting.

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I think for me, as an artist,

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I feel my strength - if there is any strength -

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is to do with my culture, with my roots, where I belong to.

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Though I live here in London and I'm very happy to be here,

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of course, I feel what feeds my imagination, my feeling,

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my emotion, is what's going on there.

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'Walid went to art school in Baghdad

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'and left in 1976 when persecution of the Kurds was intensifying.'

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THEY CHAT INAUDIBLY

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'His family still lives there.

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'Northern Iraq is now relatively peaceful

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'and Walid is able to go back.'

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'From the window of the plane,

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'I saw this beautiful view of one of the tributaries to the Tigris River.

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'The image was overwhelming and amazing, this kind of artery,

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'like a snake, moving over a dry, barren landscape.

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'You feel the thirst of all this space for water.'

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All the hope for that land and the people there.

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This is Arbil, the fastest-growing town in Northern Iraq.

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It has a gallery for contemporary art, pretty unusual in Iraq,

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where most art is traditional or decorative.

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Going out can be dangerous.

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THEY GREET ONE ANOTHER IN OWN LANGUAGE

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He says people are visiting the galleries in Baghdad

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but it is quite risky.

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People visit and they are not sure if they'll be back or not

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because it is so dangerous.

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Walid is here to help install a show of his silent mountain pictures.

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'Mountains, for me, is a form like a pyramid, for example.'

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You try to reach the summit, you'll be able to see more.

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It's a kind of enlightenment as well. This repetition is like poetry.

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'Mountain is a place where they used to flee from the government, to go to the mountain as a refuge.

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'Mountain is like an identity for them.

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That's why the Kurds claim that Kurds have no friends but the mountains.

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We had a very harsh time because we never knew what would happen to us.

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Every minute, you were under threat that somebody come to the door

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or people in the villages, a lot of them, just disappeared.

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As-Salamu Alaykum...

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In his home town of Duhok in the 1950s, Walid's father formed

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the first workers' union.

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'He defended the right of the workers and, for that reason,

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'he went to prison twice.'

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MAN TALKS OWN LANGUAGE

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He says in 1963, there was a coup d'etat by the Ba'athist Party.

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A policeman and one intelligence serviceman came to the shop where he worked.

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They asked him to go to the police station.

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So he just found a quick excuse and he ran.

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I asked him how long he stayed, and he said for six years.

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In the mountains.

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This is Saddam's interrogation centre in northern Iraq.

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'Any dissent or cry for freedom - even having a typewriter would be

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'enough on its own to be in prison.'

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It's now a museum and art gallery.

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One of the artists who was working here,

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he was taking the story from the victims and he makes sculptures.

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I call this theatre sculpture.

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It's just showing you how was the situation in these spaces here.

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Saddam Hussein was using the tanks, like what you see outside,

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against the civilian people.

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In 1988, Saddam Hussein, the regime, he destroy all the villages

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on the border and it was around 5,000 villages.

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We had the idea to build a house with something that remain from the families.

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The mirror is representing the victims. 182,000 victims.

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At Walid's show, the local dignitaries are out in force.

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The city's art students are here too.

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HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

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TRANSLATION: It's new for me.

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I've not seen anything like this in Kurdistan.

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It's normally realist art here. This is very new. That's why I like it.

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HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

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TRANSLATION: I think Walid wants to go to the top of the mountain, step by step.

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HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

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TRANSLATION: The mountain means power. To take power.

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Shwan is here.

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He's the man responsible for raising money for the Venice show.

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He thought it would be easy but it wasn't.

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The excuse was, why promote art?

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Go outside, see what's happening.

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We have no schools, no orphanages.

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We have no health care. We need electricity.

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So, as a big corporation, why should I support art?

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They're really looking at putting a band aid on the body

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and forgetting all about the soul.

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It's quite fortunate that Walid is able to come back here,

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with other artists who worked

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in Baghdad or in the south. It's a very different situation.

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Even some Iraqis that are here now are afraid to go back to Baghdad.

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6,000 miles away in New York City, Ahmed Alsoudani is waiting

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for the results of the biggest sale of his life.

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In London, one of Ahmed's paintings is coming up at Christie's.

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His dealer is here.

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-He's in good company, Ahmed, then?

-Yeah, he is.

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It's quite scary company, isn't it? Isn't it Warhol, Damien Hirst...?

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It's very scary.

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I think it's appropriate, but it's early days, you know?

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He's a young artist.

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It is a big deal and it is anxiety-producing.

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That picture is owned by Charles Saatchi, and one of several, I take it?

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Saatchi owns a number of very good paintings by Ahmed,

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and works on paper.

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Is this a big moment? A Middle Eastern artist

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in this company is quite something, I don't dare say.

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Maybe. I don't particularly believe in these kinds of, you know,

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regionalist ideas, and if you are a really regional artist,

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I think you wouldn't end up in, or even excel in, Christie's!

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The Warhol portrait, here it is,

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£9,600,000.

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Sold...

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to the room at £9,600,000. Well done, sir. Paddle number 38.

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Lot number 34, the Ahmed Alsoudani.

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The 2008 picture. I can start the bidding at £100,000...

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He may not be Andy Warhol yet, but he's in the big league.

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Ahmed now has a waiting list for his work and show all over the world.

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150 is here.

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About twice what we would sell...

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180,000.

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No, no.

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The Alsoudani, then, at 180,000,

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selling on the far left.

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All done.

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At £180,000.

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Yours, Ingrid.

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Oh, it's gone already!

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It's gone! That was fast.

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So shall I call Ahmed down?

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Hi, it's Robert.

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I'm just giving you the news - it sold well. It sold...

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for £180 plus the commission so it'll be about 325, 330.

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Dollars. It's a good result.

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OK, speak to you soon, bye.

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-Pleased?

-Yes. He's like... He's just relieved.

0:25:350:25:38

But when you think that two or three years ago

0:25:380:25:41

he was selling for 20,000 so...

0:25:410:25:44

-that's quite a boost, isn't it?

-It was a good investment!

0:25:440:25:47

'All this success, I never thought that's going to happen.'

0:25:500:25:54

Better this than not this.

0:25:540:25:56

No, no, it's really... Yeah. It's great.

0:25:560:25:59

It's a lot of pressure, but...

0:25:590:26:02

I try to be in my studio and paint as much as I can.

0:26:020:26:05

What's going to go to Venice here?

0:26:050:26:07

There are four paintings, and they are done.

0:26:070:26:10

We're just waiting for probably a couple more weeks

0:26:100:26:14

to be shipped.

0:26:140:26:16

'Though he was brought up in the Middle East,

0:26:160:26:19

'he's also immersed in Western art history.'

0:26:190:26:23

It actually almost has everything to do with a painting by Caravaggio.

0:26:230:26:28

So, this image, it's here.

0:26:280:26:30

This guy, here.

0:26:310:26:34

And that, here.

0:26:350:26:37

And this guy

0:26:370:26:39

is not here because...

0:26:390:26:41

he tried to protect Christ also to block the chaos behind his hands.

0:26:410:26:48

Behind here.

0:26:500:26:51

So I took him out and I show the chaos.

0:26:510:26:55

It's risky to show people

0:26:550:26:59

where this painting comes from because he's Caravaggio

0:26:590:27:03

so the risk comes from... that will destroy my painting,

0:27:030:27:07

-but I'm willing to take a risk.

0:27:070:27:08

In Helsinki, Ahdal is tussling with the water theme for Venice.

0:27:110:27:16

I don't like to show water when I talk about water.

0:27:160:27:20

So it was really hard until, like, I came up with an idea.

0:27:200:27:23

I don't know if anybody will understand it, but I think it's really connected to water.

0:27:230:27:27

He's calling it Consumption Of War.

0:27:280:27:31

Explain to me the concept of this.

0:27:310:27:33

I thought the best way is to really see the real source of...

0:27:330:27:39

the threat of water, or the lack of water, we will have.

0:27:390:27:42

It's basically because of the factories and the corporations, they want to be better than each other

0:27:420:27:48

and in the end, they have to produce things

0:27:480:27:50

and that production is actually sucking in the water.

0:27:500:27:53

If you make one pair of jeans, it takes 1,400 gallons of water.

0:27:540:27:59

BUZZING

0:27:590:28:01

-This is Star Wars?

-Exactly, yeah.

0:28:040:28:06

It could be like Cain and Abel as well, if you want to go through...

0:28:080:28:12

THEY LAUGH

0:28:120:28:13

It's the coming war.

0:28:160:28:18

It's the next war.

0:28:180:28:19

A litre of water right now, drinking water,

0:28:370:28:40

is actually more experience than the litre of gas that I put in the car.

0:28:400:28:45

That is reality.

0:28:450:28:46

I am not going to be so cowboy-ish

0:28:510:28:54

as to say yes, there will be war.

0:28:540:28:56

I will say that if we do not solve the problem creatively,

0:28:560:29:00

there will be tensions, and God knows, we don't need any more tension in this area.

0:29:000:29:04

Iraq for ever has been using the Tigris and Euphrates as open sewers.

0:29:070:29:11

Essentially, this is sewage from Sulaymaniyah city

0:29:120:29:15

which eventually becomes drinking water

0:29:150:29:19

for the rest of Iraq.

0:29:190:29:21

Looks suspiciously like a nice waterfall which children can go in

0:29:240:29:27

and swim. It's an horrific thought, actually.

0:29:270:29:31

It's bad enough that animals could come down here and drink.

0:29:320:29:36

And this was once Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers,

0:29:420:29:47

the Garden of Eden.

0:29:470:29:48

The head water of the Tigris and Euphrates come from the mountains of Kurdistan.

0:29:500:29:54

Divided between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria.

0:29:540:29:57

It is not only being dammed in Turkey, it is also being dammed in Iran.

0:29:580:30:02

So we have less and less and less water.

0:30:040:30:07

The end result is that within a few years,

0:30:070:30:10

agriculture is going to die in the land where it was born.

0:30:100:30:14

Up at the fountain head in Kurdistan,

0:30:210:30:23

Walida's taking photos of the waterfall, Gali Ali Bag,

0:30:230:30:28

for an artwork he's planning for Venice.

0:30:280:30:30

This waterfall is very famous in Iraq.

0:30:300:30:33

It's like a Mecca for tourists.

0:30:330:30:35

This image is even featured on the 5,000 Iraqi note.

0:30:380:30:41

You wouldn't think from the weather today, but this waterfall

0:30:430:30:47

in the summer dries up and they pump water

0:30:470:30:51

to keep it running so that people come and see it.

0:30:510:30:54

It's a kind of deceit, isn't it?

0:30:550:30:57

They're pumping the water here

0:30:570:30:59

-to promote the idea that it is a bountiful...

-Yeah, absolutely.

0:30:590:31:03

..waterfall. But there isn't any water there.

0:31:030:31:05

I mean, in the winter and spring, there is still.

0:31:050:31:07

But in the summer, it does dry up.

0:31:070:31:09

So this image, will you be making an image like this of the banknote?

0:31:090:31:13

That's right. A large image, about five or four-and-a-half metres,

0:31:130:31:16

by maybe three metres.

0:31:160:31:18

And I will project, from the back, the waterfall.

0:31:180:31:23

The Waterfall is one of two works that Walid is preparing for Venice.

0:31:230:31:27

In the entrance of the venue in Venice, I will have a wall,

0:31:270:31:31

which is quite long, about nine, ten metres.

0:31:310:31:34

So I will occupy that wall with stripes to express the tension,

0:31:340:31:38

express the need and express the dependence of the land on that river.

0:31:380:31:43

That building, which is very run down and tired and crumbling, the walls...

0:31:450:31:50

But, as somebody said, that will just fit the state of Iraq as it is now.

0:31:500:31:55

The Venice Biennale is the glitziest event

0:32:160:32:19

in the international art world calendar.

0:32:190:32:22

It's somewhere between the Cannes Film Festival, the Olympics

0:32:230:32:26

and an international trade fair.

0:32:260:32:29

It takes place on two huge sites.

0:32:330:32:36

But on a backwater, a few hundred yards from the other

0:32:370:32:40

grand national pavilions, there's a little corner of Iraq.

0:32:400:32:44

There's less than a week to go before the show opens to the public.

0:32:480:32:52

The six artists will be working together for the first time.

0:32:530:32:58

WHIRRING AND CLANKING

0:32:580:33:02

'I have been here, like, three, four days.

0:33:120:33:15

'It's almost done, actually. Yeah.'

0:33:150:33:17

It's just a kind of replica of the video piece room

0:33:210:33:25

and kind of really depressing, I want it to be,

0:33:250:33:28

with the flickering lights.

0:33:280:33:30

'What I like is the contrast between the clean, white wall office

0:33:310:33:34

'kind of boring wall and the history, texture, randomness.'

0:33:340:33:41

I'm just waiting now.

0:33:420:33:44

A speaker needs to be fixed up and it's a bit slow because...

0:33:440:33:47

I don't know. Like, people are not working a lot here

0:33:470:33:51

and they have holidays.

0:33:510:33:53

GLASS SHATTERS

0:33:530:33:54

That's much better when you don't see this amount of metal.

0:33:550:34:00

SHE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN

0:34:050:34:09

For the curator, Mary Angela, it's been a labour of love.

0:34:090:34:12

She's hands-on with everything,

0:34:120:34:14

from the minutiae of installation to funding.

0:34:140:34:17

There's not much to go round.

0:34:170:34:19

This is our ladder, because we got it out of the garbage

0:34:190:34:22

and we fixed it.

0:34:220:34:23

It's broken, crappy, so we got our own ladder.

0:34:230:34:27

-What? The ladder?

-We fixed it.

0:34:270:34:29

It's always, always a problem about the ladder.

0:34:330:34:37

There's one ladder.

0:34:380:34:40

Let's not talk about the problems, we'll never finish! OK, so...

0:34:430:34:47

Ahmed hasn't arrived yet,

0:34:490:34:51

so Azad Nanakeli is helping hang his pictures.

0:34:510:34:55

A Kurd, like Walid, Azad now lives in Florence.

0:34:550:34:59

He left Iraq after leaving art school in Baghdad in the mid-'70s,

0:34:590:35:03

when Saddam's grip was tightening.

0:35:030:35:05

Did that mean that all the artists who remained under Saddam, really,

0:35:050:35:10

in one way or another, had to reflect the triumph of Saddam Hussein?

0:35:100:35:15

In the same way that they did in Russia in Stalin's period?

0:35:150:35:18

Is that what happened?

0:35:180:35:20

I think it's not only Saddam Hussein.

0:35:200:35:22

Most of the countries in the Middle East was like that.

0:35:220:35:26

Governments politically control everything -

0:35:260:35:30

the artists and other things - so that's what happened.

0:35:300:35:34

Some artists, poets, others, they left Iraq and I'm one of them.

0:35:360:35:40

We were without passports, without nothing and we had a chance.

0:35:420:35:48

We worked very hard to be here.

0:35:480:35:51

I'm glad to be here.

0:35:510:35:53

When I was a child, there was this kind of faucet in my country,

0:36:010:36:05

in my city.

0:36:050:36:06

One of my...my... One of my nephews died with malaria, the sickness.

0:36:060:36:12

The kind of water we have, this was just bad water.

0:36:120:36:15

In Africa today, every minute, a person dies for want of clean water.

0:36:220:36:27

WATER TRICKLES

0:36:270:36:31

Back in Iraq now,

0:36:450:36:46

do you think it can redeem itself from the days of Saddam?

0:36:460:36:49

Right now, we have other problems,

0:36:490:36:52

with also the way that they treat culture,

0:36:520:36:55

because there is not enough possibility today to do it.

0:36:550:36:59

With the religions and other things,

0:36:590:37:01

they don't leave you to do what you want.

0:37:010:37:04

I think most of the artists, they have no chance, really,

0:37:050:37:08

to do a lot there.

0:37:080:37:09

We hope, one day, there is more democracy in these countries,

0:37:110:37:14

to have more chance for the artists to...

0:37:140:37:17

to change something.

0:37:170:37:19

We need it.

0:37:190:37:22

The king of the dates.

0:37:300:37:32

This has come from Basra.

0:37:340:37:36

It's very delicious - do you want to eat?

0:37:360:37:38

No.

0:37:380:37:40

In Rome, especially, it's hard to find dates from Iraq.

0:37:400:37:44

You know, Basra was the most famous region in the world

0:37:510:37:54

for producing dates.

0:37:540:37:56

And we had 30 millions of palms.

0:37:580:38:01

But with the war, Iraq-Iran War, Saddam Hussein cut,

0:38:090:38:14

destroyed 20 millions of palms.

0:38:140:38:17

So it's a disaster with water and a disaster with the dates.

0:38:210:38:25

Ali is making a pyramid of dates - some edible,

0:38:280:38:31

some contaminated by salt water and some by uranium.

0:38:310:38:36

In 1991, when the war was the Gulf War,

0:38:360:38:40

the Americans used uranium

0:38:400:38:43

and someone says, like, "This uranium, it goes to the earth."

0:38:430:38:48

And the people were afraid to eat the dates.

0:38:480:38:52

In the marshlands of the south,

0:38:550:38:57

Basra was once the cultural capital of Iraq.

0:38:570:39:00

It was known as the Venice of the Orient.

0:39:030:39:06

In fact, Europeans said Basra was even more beautiful than Venice,

0:39:060:39:10

because it was greener.

0:39:100:39:11

It's strange cos this could just be round the corner

0:39:140:39:17

here in Venice, couldn't it?

0:39:170:39:19

-Yeah.

-It looks exactly like...

-Exactly. Exactly.

0:39:190:39:22

If you want to see the real impact

0:39:220:39:25

of the shortage of water, you go to Basra and see the tragedies there.

0:39:250:39:30

People are deserting those areas because there is no water,

0:39:300:39:34

no agriculture, no...nothing.

0:39:340:39:36

Now, as Iraq is trying to regain its normal life,

0:39:380:39:41

there is this tragedy with water.

0:39:410:39:43

Walid is rushing to get his waterfall piece finished

0:39:540:39:58

for the opening in three days' time.

0:39:580:40:00

'Since I was young, I always remember to visit this Gali Ali Bag waterfall.

0:40:000:40:06

'It was very ironic, because the image of the waterfall on the money, now that money

0:40:060:40:11

'is helping the waterfall to carry on.' CHUCKLES

0:40:110:40:15

BUZZING OF LIGHT SABRES

0:40:180:40:20

Adel's work is now ready.

0:40:200:40:23

I like for people to provoke their thoughts,

0:40:260:40:29

and like when they come and they see this, and they...

0:40:290:40:31

where is the water here. But then, then they see the landscape,

0:40:310:40:35

like the image outside, which totally dried, then maybe they will think,

0:40:350:40:40

"I will go back and see the video again."

0:40:400:40:43

The most extraordinary of all their stories,

0:40:540:40:58

is that of Halim Al Karim.

0:40:580:41:00

He now lives between Denver and Dubai.

0:41:000:41:03

But to escape conscription into the Iran Iraq war,

0:41:030:41:06

he hid for nearly three years in a hole in the desert

0:41:060:41:10

near the border of Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

0:41:100:41:13

HALIM: I decide to hide in the desert

0:41:130:41:18

and not to be part of this deceived politics

0:41:180:41:24

and not to be part of that violence.

0:41:240:41:28

And it impact on me in different ways

0:41:290:41:33

but mainly it make me, this hard time,

0:41:330:41:39

it make me appreciate more my human value.

0:41:390:41:45

And I try to...to say or to explain,

0:41:450:41:52

or to express this experience through my art.

0:41:520:41:55

How did you survive that?

0:41:560:41:59

I make a hole like two metres deep.

0:41:590:42:03

I mix clay and grass and I build a dome.

0:42:030:42:05

I survive there with the help of an old Iraqi woman.

0:42:060:42:11

At that time, she was 75 years old.

0:42:120:42:15

She was visiting me or providing me

0:42:160:42:19

with water and food every two or three weeks.

0:42:190:42:23

And because I study Sumerian civilisation -

0:42:240:42:28

they believe in goddesses -

0:42:280:42:31

and I thought, "I think that that woman,

0:42:310:42:36

"she is the goddess of the desert."

0:42:360:42:38

'I became as a new Sumerian. Always when I deal with women

0:42:430:42:49

'they are just a goddess for me.'

0:42:490:42:52

I think we just need to...

0:42:530:42:55

'Of course, in your work many of these women are hidden by the veil.

0:42:550:42:59

'You know, the reason that I use the veil to cover my photography...

0:42:590:43:05

'it's nothing to do from the Arab or Muslim tradition of women

0:43:060:43:12

'when they cover their face.

0:43:120:43:14

'But I took this element to express the hidden inner,

0:43:150:43:21

'the hidden characters, the hidden desires on human being.

0:43:210:43:26

'We cover ourself'

0:43:280:43:30

with layers and layers of...

0:43:300:43:33

er, of veils.

0:43:330:43:36

Ali Assaf's installation

0:43:440:43:47

is about what he left behind in Iraq.

0:43:470:43:50

After 1980, it became slowly like, you know,

0:43:560:44:01

-someone by, um, force, by...

-Yes.

0:44:010:44:05

..took something from you and you don't want to lose this,

0:44:050:44:08

and then you start to live in nostalgia, or in your past -

0:44:080:44:14

why I wanted to go but why they don't let me go back.

0:44:140:44:18

-So it becomes more and more...

-Powerful?

0:44:180:44:21

Yeah. And this is... Er, you cannot hear any more your parents,

0:44:210:44:25

your brothers.

0:44:250:44:26

You cannot write to them, they don't write to you.

0:44:260:44:30

It was like someone tell you, "No, you don't do it, you don't do it."

0:44:300:44:33

And you feel like a child.

0:44:330:44:34

The mother said, "No, don't do it," and you want to do it.

0:44:340:44:37

It become then the imagination and the, um...

0:44:370:44:43

memories.

0:44:430:44:44

When we came back after 20, 25 years,

0:44:480:44:51

and you see a kid - your brother was a kid -

0:44:510:44:54

now he is a father and big and old,

0:44:540:45:00

and you don't know he's my brother or not, you know?

0:45:000:45:03

-It's...

-This is your brother behind you.

-Yeah, there are four brothers.

0:45:030:45:06

Four brothers, yeah.

0:45:060:45:08

This one, I didn't see him

0:45:080:45:12

because he died in 2003 when the American

0:45:120:45:15

and English American went to Basra.

0:45:150:45:18

He got some troubles with his health

0:45:180:45:21

and there was no pharmacy, no medicine.

0:45:210:45:24

This is my youngest sister,

0:45:260:45:29

she became grandmother. ALAN CHUCKLES

0:45:290:45:32

Yeah. This is my youngest brother, he became a grandfather.

0:45:320:45:38

Me too - I became old.

0:45:400:45:42

And this, is this about the pollution?

0:45:450:45:47

These, um...

0:45:470:45:48

-I see this is coming from above.

-Yeah, yeah.

0:45:480:45:52

In 1991 when they start to, um, bomb Iraq,

0:45:520:45:58

they saw that the water was like very dark,

0:45:580:46:02

raining like oil drops.

0:46:020:46:05

The artist who tackles the war and occupation most head-on is Halim.

0:46:180:46:23

His take on water is strikingly different from the others.

0:46:260:46:30

The Nation's Laundry, what's behind that?

0:46:310:46:34

It's about Western governments -

0:46:340:46:36

always they try to find solution for their problems

0:46:360:46:40

in the East. They wash their dirty clothes in our life.

0:46:400:46:48

Our friends the American, they came to Iraq and they say,

0:46:480:46:51

"We'd like, or we will help you

0:46:510:46:54

"to liberate yourself from the... that regime."

0:46:540:46:58

And we welcomed them.

0:46:590:47:01

But we discover there is a hidden agenda...

0:47:010:47:05

Oil?

0:47:050:47:06

-Many things.

-And yet...

0:47:060:47:07

We don't need to talk about this. It's too obvious.

0:47:070:47:10

I am trying to tell them that any time you want to wash your dirty...

0:47:100:47:14

-Your dirty linen.

-..laundry in our country, always we will resist.

0:47:140:47:19

In art, we will resist you.

0:47:200:47:23

And blood to blood, we will resist you.

0:47:230:47:25

And if we resist you, maybe one day you will stop doing this crime

0:47:250:47:32

and then you become more beautiful.

0:47:320:47:35

You will be like my goddess.

0:47:350:47:38

Do you go back to Iraq from time to time?

0:47:390:47:43

I never left Iraq.

0:47:430:47:44

Physically, I left Iraq in 1991...

0:47:440:47:47

but, um...

0:47:470:47:50

..my soul is still there.

0:47:520:47:53

I'm still there.

0:47:550:47:56

I left Iraq not because I was scared to be killed.

0:47:570:48:03

No, I left Iraq to tell our story. Iraqis' story.

0:48:030:48:07

And now I'm telling it.

0:48:090:48:11

But the work itself is more haunting than accusatory.

0:48:180:48:22

What's interesting about all these artists

0:48:220:48:25

is that their work suggests rather than tells.

0:48:250:48:29

There is obviously a big political dimension to the Iraqi show,

0:48:290:48:33

and yet it's politics with a small "P".

0:48:330:48:35

I think that what you hope to get from art, also,

0:48:350:48:38

is something that you can't get from the news,

0:48:380:48:41

so you have more of an emotional understanding.

0:48:410:48:46

It's very easy for political work to become too close to reportage,

0:48:460:48:50

and I think what impressed me... it's very imaginative.

0:48:500:48:53

It's not the expected message that's been delivered in a predictable way.

0:48:530:48:58

There's work that...really, it takes a leap, and takes risks.

0:48:580:49:04

It's interesting, isn't it, that Ahmed Alsoudani

0:49:080:49:11

is also showing alongside Jeff Koons.

0:49:110:49:15

He's showing at the Palazzo Grassi, which is a private collection

0:49:150:49:19

featuring a lot of the best-known artists in the world,

0:49:190:49:22

but six months ago, I bet most of their curators had never heard of them.

0:49:220:49:26

It shows just how quickly reputations can be made in the contemporary art world.

0:49:260:49:31

We haven't seen Ahmed Alsoudani yet at the Iraqi pavilion,

0:49:340:49:38

so we're going upmarket here, upriver.

0:49:380:49:41

Hello. How are you? Thanks for coming.

0:50:060:50:10

Have you been yet to the Iraqi pavilion?

0:50:100:50:14

Yeah, I went a few hours ago.

0:50:140:50:16

I went over there, check the place, and it was really interesting.

0:50:160:50:19

-It's quite a contrast between here and there!

-Huge! Yeah.

0:50:190:50:23

Of the artists here, who do you like and admire?

0:50:230:50:27

Most of the artists, probably.

0:50:270:50:29

All of them except me are big names and very established artists. So I really admire a lot of them.

0:50:290:50:34

How did you get in here? I haven't worked it out yet.

0:50:340:50:37

-Ohh.

-Other than your talent, what else brought you here?

0:50:370:50:40

Well, as you know, this collection is a part of the Pinault Foundation.

0:50:400:50:47

So, Francois Pinault is one of my fans.

0:50:480:50:52

A most important collector.

0:50:520:50:54

I have to go tomorrow to the Iraqi pavilion...

0:50:570:51:00

for the opening.

0:51:000:51:01

Back at the house, time for preparations is nearly up.

0:51:010:51:06

The critics are about to arrive to view the show.

0:51:130:51:16

-WOMAN:

-There's, again, Ali Assaf, who's our interpreter...

0:51:200:51:24

It's a timely moment for insights from the Arab world.

0:51:240:51:28

This picture is taken from a Mesopotamian batik.

0:51:310:51:35

So, Walid...so you have brought Iraq to Venice?

0:51:350:51:40

That's right.

0:51:400:51:41

All these rooms here tell this story of the tragedy of water

0:51:410:51:44

in Iraq, and in the whole of the Middle East.

0:51:440:51:46

You go from one room to another and you're still in the same environment.

0:51:460:51:51

It really works, I think.

0:51:510:51:52

It's nice to see this way,

0:51:520:51:55

and each artist will have a different approach

0:51:550:51:57

and maybe there is a complementary effort

0:51:570:52:00

to make a whole picture of our theme of water.

0:52:000:52:04

It's June 2nd, and the whole Biennale opens to the public.

0:52:170:52:21

The Iraqi pavilion, too, is open for business.

0:52:210:52:24

-Full. I'm sorry.

-OK.

-That was the limit.

0:52:240:52:28

Sorry. People will come down, and then you can go back up.

0:52:280:52:32

They're afraid that this building might collapse,

0:52:320:52:35

so they're stopping them coming in at the door.

0:52:350:52:38

-Every time I see you, you've got a glass in your hand.

-It's the time to drink.

0:52:390:52:43

After all the stress, you have to chill out.

0:52:430:52:45

When you look at it from outside, for me, the home video I don't want to get in.

0:52:490:52:53

BUZZING OF LIGHT SABRES

0:52:530:52:56

How did you make it...

0:52:590:53:01

-That's the trick.

-..when they...

-That's the trick.

0:53:010:53:05

That's the trick? Good trick.

0:53:050:53:07

I'm fighting, actually, against many of my compatriots, who believe Iraq has gone, you know?

0:53:070:53:14

I don't believe that.

0:53:140:53:15

Do you think in next year's Biennale, or perhaps the one after it,

0:53:150:53:19

-that the artists who are representing Iraq here may actually live in Iraq?

-Correct.

0:53:190:53:23

Always remember, this is a pilot project.

0:53:230:53:26

I'm sure that in three or four Biennales,

0:53:260:53:29

we'll have Iraqi artists who live in Iraq and who'll and thrive in Iraq.

0:53:290:53:33

Kids today, unheard of, they do something amazing.

0:53:330:53:37

This is very optimistic. It makes everybody proud that Iraq is coming back to the international arena,

0:53:400:53:46

that artists are making their footprints on a festival like this in Venice.

0:53:460:53:52

This is a great beginning.

0:53:520:53:54

It's hard not to feel humbled before a nation that has suffered so much.

0:54:140:54:19

But if art can't bathe the wounds of war,

0:54:230:54:26

maybe it can do something to help recover what's been lost.

0:54:260:54:31

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

0:54:490:54:53

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0:54:530:54:56

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