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Iraq and art aren't words that usually go together. | 0:00:03 | 0:00:08 | |
Decades of war, of despotism and despair have seen to that. | 0:00:11 | 0:00:16 | |
When you think how many catastrophes we've been through, | 0:00:20 | 0:00:23 | |
through the ages, and yet we survived. | 0:00:23 | 0:00:29 | |
What actually kept us going since civilisation started in this land | 0:00:29 | 0:00:34 | |
is our culture. | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
And culture is making a comeback in Iraq. | 0:00:39 | 0:00:42 | |
For the first time since Saddam Hussein seized power some 35 years ago, | 0:00:42 | 0:00:47 | |
Iraq has a presence at the prestigious Venice Biennale. | 0:00:47 | 0:00:51 | |
It's the Olympics of art, | 0:00:53 | 0:00:55 | |
where nations invite their artists to represent them on a world stage. | 0:00:55 | 0:00:59 | |
Six artists offer a powerful insight into their country, | 0:00:59 | 0:01:03 | |
from inside and from out. | 0:01:03 | 0:01:05 | |
This is a story of exile, as well as belonging. | 0:01:05 | 0:01:09 | |
HELICOPTER WHIRRS | 0:01:37 | 0:01:39 | |
As the Palestinian writer Edward Said once said, | 0:01:49 | 0:01:52 | |
"Most people are aware of one culture, | 0:01:52 | 0:01:55 | |
"one setting, one home. Exiles are aware of at least two." | 0:01:55 | 0:02:01 | |
"Everything they do in the new environment occurs | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
"against the memory of it in the old." | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
All these Iraqi artists live like that. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:12 | |
In the land that has taken them in, | 0:02:12 | 0:02:14 | |
and the land that they remember, and imagine. | 0:02:14 | 0:02:17 | |
The first artist we meet lives in Finland, | 0:02:28 | 0:02:31 | |
not necessarily where you'd expect to find an Iraqi. | 0:02:31 | 0:02:35 | |
Abidin, that's the one. | 0:02:37 | 0:02:39 | |
-Hello. -I'm Alan. | 0:02:48 | 0:02:51 | |
Hi, Adam, huh? | 0:02:51 | 0:02:53 | |
-That's very, very welcoming. -You know! It's my territory, my rules. | 0:02:53 | 0:02:57 | |
-Come in. -All right, thank you. | 0:02:57 | 0:02:59 | |
'Adel's been here in Finland since the year 2000.' | 0:03:00 | 0:03:04 | |
-So this is your studio? -Yeah. | 0:03:04 | 0:03:07 | |
I see it says, "Welcome to Baghdad" on the.. | 0:03:07 | 0:03:12 | |
-That's right, to create a small section of Baghdad here. -Yes. | 0:03:12 | 0:03:15 | |
I went to Baghdad 2004, by car from Jordan, | 0:03:15 | 0:03:19 | |
so when I was entering Baghdad there was a the American checkpoint | 0:03:19 | 0:03:22 | |
and there was this American soldier with the glasses | 0:03:22 | 0:03:26 | |
and like typical American, you know, that you see in movies. | 0:03:26 | 0:03:30 | |
And he, he told me, "Welcome to Baghdad." | 0:03:30 | 0:03:34 | |
So it was like, are you kidding me here? | 0:03:34 | 0:03:37 | |
It's my city, you know. | 0:03:37 | 0:03:39 | |
When you get your own country invaded in this way, | 0:03:42 | 0:03:46 | |
you start not to belong to that place any more, even if you are from there. | 0:03:46 | 0:03:50 | |
Emigrating to Finland inspired one of Adel's video installations. | 0:03:51 | 0:03:56 | |
Viewers look into a spy hole in a fridge. | 0:03:58 | 0:04:01 | |
A man inside the fridge fires questions at them. | 0:04:01 | 0:04:04 | |
What do you think about 11th September? | 0:04:06 | 0:04:08 | |
Are you a Muslim? Sunni? | 0:04:08 | 0:04:11 | |
Samantha Fox, do you know who she is? | 0:04:11 | 0:04:14 | |
Did you see Baghdad burning? | 0:04:14 | 0:04:16 | |
Those questions are real questions, actually, | 0:04:16 | 0:04:19 | |
I used to hear them from people. | 0:04:19 | 0:04:21 | |
I just gathered them, I didn't write any from my own. | 0:04:21 | 0:04:25 | |
Bin Laden, where do you think he is right now? | 0:04:25 | 0:04:28 | |
All these questions people ask me. | 0:04:28 | 0:04:30 | |
Suicide bombers, what do you think about them? | 0:04:30 | 0:04:33 | |
Where is Osama Bin Laden? Where is Saddam Hussein? | 0:04:33 | 0:04:36 | |
I mean, how the hell I know? If the CIA doesn't know, how do you think I would know? | 0:04:36 | 0:04:40 | |
How does it feel to ride a camel? | 0:04:40 | 0:04:42 | |
So I could have asked you, how is the situation in Iraq right now? | 0:04:42 | 0:04:46 | |
How IS the situation in Iraq right now? | 0:04:46 | 0:04:48 | |
-Are you asking me right now? -Yeah, sure. -I have no idea. | 0:04:48 | 0:04:51 | |
What do you think of Osama Bin Laden? | 0:04:51 | 0:04:54 | |
LAUGHS | 0:04:54 | 0:04:56 | |
-How does it feel to ride a camel? -It feels good! | 0:04:56 | 0:04:59 | |
I've done it myself, I think it feels good too. | 0:04:59 | 0:05:02 | |
What are the things that Finland has brought to your work? | 0:05:02 | 0:05:06 | |
Be free and think in a free way | 0:05:06 | 0:05:09 | |
and do whatever I want and don't give a damn. | 0:05:09 | 0:05:12 | |
Adel has re-imagined the propaganda songs of his youth. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
# Ooo-ooo | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
# Ooo-ooo-oo... # | 0:05:19 | 0:05:22 | |
If you are real in what you do and you believe in it, | 0:05:22 | 0:05:25 | |
anybody will understand it, even if it's totally strange. | 0:05:25 | 0:05:29 | |
These songs that made in '90s basically to flatter | 0:05:39 | 0:05:43 | |
Saddam himself as a person. | 0:05:43 | 0:05:45 | |
Like they were singing like, "We love you, we kill people for you," | 0:05:45 | 0:05:49 | |
it's like a kind of weirdo lover. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:51 | |
We all used to sing these songs | 0:05:54 | 0:05:57 | |
because they made them in a really nice melody. | 0:05:57 | 0:05:59 | |
It's like really brainwashing. So, it felt to me like | 0:05:59 | 0:06:02 | |
all of us in that time, we were like the cliche of a bimbo. | 0:06:02 | 0:06:06 | |
We just repeat what we sang. | 0:06:06 | 0:06:09 | |
But the lyrics are funny when you read them, | 0:06:13 | 0:06:16 | |
like, "We will wipe America from the map." I mean, hello?! | 0:06:16 | 0:06:20 | |
"We are swords and we only fit in your right hand. | 0:06:20 | 0:06:23 | |
"By Allah, we owe our lives to your moustache." | 0:06:23 | 0:06:28 | |
Yeah, yeah, yeah. | 0:06:28 | 0:06:29 | |
-So if he shaves it, we'll all... -It's all over! | 0:06:29 | 0:06:34 | |
SINGING IN IRAQI | 0:06:45 | 0:06:47 | |
My God, is that the original? The same song? | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
The same song. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:52 | |
'This is the real version, a strident propaganda song, | 0:06:53 | 0:06:57 | |
'transformed by Adel into a sexy nightclub number.' | 0:06:57 | 0:07:00 | |
-It's a nice song, actually, when you hear it. -Yeah, sure. | 0:07:00 | 0:07:06 | |
Saddam was really a scary guy. | 0:07:08 | 0:07:11 | |
This guy created something in Iraq | 0:07:11 | 0:07:14 | |
that you are afraid of even your friend might be a spy on you. | 0:07:14 | 0:07:17 | |
That what made the society really like, not solid. | 0:07:19 | 0:07:22 | |
You don't know who is your friend, who is your enemy. | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
It's quite dangerous for you to go back to Iraq? | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
Iraqis are funny, like I said, "So how's the situation there?" | 0:07:29 | 0:07:33 | |
"Oh, it's really safe now. There is no problem | 0:07:33 | 0:07:35 | |
"Just explosion here and there." It's like... You know, like, OK. | 0:07:35 | 0:07:38 | |
Those guys who appear in these videos, | 0:07:40 | 0:07:42 | |
kidnap for the sake of religion and Islam, | 0:07:42 | 0:07:46 | |
and they have this Koranic phrases behind them. | 0:07:46 | 0:07:49 | |
'I was asking myself - the benefit, in the end, goes to whom?' | 0:07:49 | 0:07:53 | |
HE CHANTS | 0:07:53 | 0:07:55 | |
'They're actually feeding, or giving more legitimacy, | 0:07:55 | 0:07:59 | |
'to the occupier whenever they do these kinds of acts.' | 0:07:59 | 0:08:02 | |
So I thought, why don't I shorten the whole thing? | 0:08:02 | 0:08:05 | |
Bring that guy, make him sing to the American flag. | 0:08:05 | 0:08:08 | |
# This land is your land | 0:08:08 | 0:08:12 | |
# This land is my land | 0:08:12 | 0:08:15 | |
# From California | 0:08:15 | 0:08:17 | |
# To the New York island | 0:08:17 | 0:08:20 | |
# From the redwood forests | 0:08:20 | 0:08:23 | |
# To the Gulf Stream waters | 0:08:23 | 0:08:26 | |
# All this land was made for you and me... # | 0:08:26 | 0:08:32 | |
In New York City, Ahmed Alsoudani has had a meteoric rise to fame. | 0:08:32 | 0:08:37 | |
So much so that he's being photographed | 0:08:37 | 0:08:39 | |
for a spread in Vogue magazine. | 0:08:39 | 0:08:42 | |
-Can we move the angle? -Take it from that side. | 0:08:42 | 0:08:47 | |
Take it from this side. | 0:08:47 | 0:08:48 | |
It's a world away from Baghdad, where he was born and brought up. | 0:08:55 | 0:08:59 | |
He left because he defaced a mural of Saddam Hussein. | 0:09:06 | 0:09:10 | |
He had to make a run for it, and he hasn't been back since. | 0:09:10 | 0:09:14 | |
'You know, when you're 19, 20, | 0:09:19 | 0:09:22 | |
'you think you can change the world by doing such a funny thing.' | 0:09:22 | 0:09:28 | |
After all these years, I have more freedom to damage the mural, | 0:09:30 | 0:09:36 | |
in my painting. So it's a circle. | 0:09:36 | 0:09:40 | |
It's funny to end up doing the same thing that I have done | 0:09:40 | 0:09:44 | |
more than 20 years ago. | 0:09:44 | 0:09:46 | |
My work is about chaos... | 0:09:49 | 0:09:53 | |
and the suffering of human beings. | 0:09:53 | 0:09:56 | |
And how...brutal and harsh the life that we've been dealing with. | 0:09:56 | 0:10:04 | |
We pretend it's beautiful, but it's not. | 0:10:04 | 0:10:06 | |
'The chaos, violence - this subject matter, | 0:10:10 | 0:10:13 | |
'people have been dealing with it for many, many years. | 0:10:13 | 0:10:17 | |
'And there is kind of an unwritten rule, | 0:10:17 | 0:10:19 | |
'using earthy tones - dark, grey, colours. | 0:10:19 | 0:10:23 | |
'They keep the viewer from communicating with the painting. | 0:10:23 | 0:10:27 | |
'So I'm trying to do something a little bit different. | 0:10:27 | 0:10:31 | |
'Of course, knowing these pieces are going to be in Venice, | 0:10:33 | 0:10:36 | |
'I'm trying to do my best. | 0:10:36 | 0:10:40 | |
'Hopefully, I will be done in the next month or so.' | 0:10:40 | 0:10:44 | |
Ahmed calls himself an Iraqi-born American artist. | 0:10:44 | 0:10:49 | |
'To represent a country officially, it's such a great thing. | 0:10:49 | 0:10:53 | |
'I didn't train there, I studied here, but I spent more than half | 0:10:53 | 0:10:57 | |
'of my life over there, and my mum and my family are still there, | 0:10:57 | 0:11:00 | |
'so they update me with all these horrible things happening. | 0:11:00 | 0:11:05 | |
'I try with all these difficulties to keep in my head a beautiful image.' | 0:11:07 | 0:11:16 | |
I'm afraid to go over there, I don't want to damage the image in my head. | 0:11:16 | 0:11:20 | |
Always I go back to my experience, and it's such a treasure, | 0:11:21 | 0:11:27 | |
with all horrible things in it, | 0:11:27 | 0:11:29 | |
but it's a good place to always go and dig. | 0:11:29 | 0:11:33 | |
For the Venice Biennale, | 0:11:42 | 0:11:44 | |
big league countries have permanent national pavilions. | 0:11:44 | 0:11:48 | |
Newcomers have to find places on the fringes. | 0:11:48 | 0:11:51 | |
Just round the corner from the Arsenale, | 0:11:51 | 0:11:54 | |
this old house on a backwater will be the Iraqi pavilion. | 0:11:54 | 0:11:57 | |
The curator of the show is Mary Angela Schroth, | 0:11:59 | 0:12:02 | |
an American based in Rome. | 0:12:02 | 0:12:04 | |
She's been negotiating with the Iraqi government for | 0:12:04 | 0:12:08 | |
official recognition - tricky, when the country's still in disarray. | 0:12:08 | 0:12:13 | |
OK, well, what can you say? | 0:12:13 | 0:12:16 | |
She's teamed up with Ali Assaf, an Iraqi exile who also lives in Rome. | 0:12:21 | 0:12:25 | |
It was Ali who first had the idea of bringing Iraq to Venice. | 0:12:25 | 0:12:29 | |
We had always this desire to participate in Biennale Venice. | 0:12:31 | 0:12:35 | |
And it was not possible because of our relation with the past regime. | 0:12:37 | 0:12:41 | |
So we thought exactly in 2004 when things changed, we said, | 0:12:43 | 0:12:48 | |
"OK, now, why not? | 0:12:48 | 0:12:50 | |
"We have to do it, we can do it". | 0:12:50 | 0:12:52 | |
So seven years' planning? | 0:12:52 | 0:12:54 | |
Yeah, yeah - planning, thinking, | 0:12:54 | 0:12:57 | |
talking with Mary Angela Schroth, the curator. | 0:12:57 | 0:13:00 | |
She gave me very much energy and she said, OK, we risk, | 0:13:00 | 0:13:04 | |
and we just open a door and we will see, maybe other doors will open. | 0:13:04 | 0:13:10 | |
We were shown a few places. Some of them looked more like art galleries. | 0:13:16 | 0:13:21 | |
The choice came to this, very simply, because when I walked in, | 0:13:22 | 0:13:26 | |
it felt like an old Iraqi house. | 0:13:26 | 0:13:28 | |
It actually brings back those memories. | 0:13:31 | 0:13:34 | |
For us, it's like a symbol of an Iraqi house which is abandoned, | 0:13:37 | 0:13:45 | |
like a family left because of war. | 0:13:45 | 0:13:50 | |
For this reason, most of the rooms we kept as it is. | 0:13:50 | 0:13:53 | |
They also decided on a theme for the group's show. Water - wounded water. | 0:14:03 | 0:14:08 | |
Water is a resource with which Venice is awash, | 0:14:08 | 0:14:12 | |
but it's perilously scarce in Iraq. | 0:14:12 | 0:14:16 | |
Four months to go before the Venice show, | 0:14:37 | 0:14:39 | |
and Walid Siti is working on the theme of water. | 0:14:39 | 0:14:43 | |
Walid, hi. | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
'He comes from Kurdistan, the mountainous north of Iraq. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:53 | |
'The fountain head for the dry lands below.' | 0:14:53 | 0:14:57 | |
-I see lots of mountains. -That's right. | 0:14:59 | 0:15:04 | |
Everything in this room seems to be a part of your memory, | 0:15:04 | 0:15:07 | |
that history of yours. | 0:15:07 | 0:15:09 | |
My family come from Iraq originally, my father left in '48, | 0:15:09 | 0:15:13 | |
my mother left even earlier, and I've never been there. | 0:15:13 | 0:15:16 | |
Interesting. | 0:15:16 | 0:15:18 | |
I think for me, as an artist, | 0:15:18 | 0:15:19 | |
I feel my strength - if there is any strength - | 0:15:19 | 0:15:22 | |
is to do with my culture, with my roots, where I belong to. | 0:15:22 | 0:15:27 | |
Though I live here in London and I'm very happy to be here, | 0:15:27 | 0:15:31 | |
of course, I feel what feeds my imagination, my feeling, | 0:15:31 | 0:15:36 | |
my emotion, is what's going on there. | 0:15:36 | 0:15:41 | |
'Walid went to art school in Baghdad | 0:15:41 | 0:15:43 | |
'and left in 1976 when persecution of the Kurds was intensifying.' | 0:15:43 | 0:15:49 | |
THEY CHAT INAUDIBLY | 0:15:49 | 0:15:55 | |
'His family still lives there. | 0:15:55 | 0:15:58 | |
'Northern Iraq is now relatively peaceful | 0:16:00 | 0:16:02 | |
'and Walid is able to go back.' | 0:16:02 | 0:16:05 | |
'From the window of the plane, | 0:16:17 | 0:16:19 | |
'I saw this beautiful view of one of the tributaries to the Tigris River. | 0:16:19 | 0:16:24 | |
'The image was overwhelming and amazing, this kind of artery, | 0:16:24 | 0:16:30 | |
'like a snake, moving over a dry, barren landscape. | 0:16:30 | 0:16:34 | |
'You feel the thirst of all this space for water.' | 0:16:34 | 0:16:38 | |
All the hope for that land and the people there. | 0:16:40 | 0:16:43 | |
This is Arbil, the fastest-growing town in Northern Iraq. | 0:16:47 | 0:16:51 | |
It has a gallery for contemporary art, pretty unusual in Iraq, | 0:16:51 | 0:16:56 | |
where most art is traditional or decorative. | 0:16:56 | 0:16:59 | |
Going out can be dangerous. | 0:16:59 | 0:17:01 | |
THEY GREET ONE ANOTHER IN OWN LANGUAGE | 0:17:02 | 0:17:05 | |
He says people are visiting the galleries in Baghdad | 0:17:15 | 0:17:17 | |
but it is quite risky. | 0:17:17 | 0:17:20 | |
People visit and they are not sure if they'll be back or not | 0:17:20 | 0:17:22 | |
because it is so dangerous. | 0:17:22 | 0:17:24 | |
Walid is here to help install a show of his silent mountain pictures. | 0:17:27 | 0:17:31 | |
'Mountains, for me, is a form like a pyramid, for example.' | 0:17:33 | 0:17:40 | |
You try to reach the summit, you'll be able to see more. | 0:17:40 | 0:17:47 | |
It's a kind of enlightenment as well. This repetition is like poetry. | 0:17:47 | 0:17:52 | |
'Mountain is a place where they used to flee from the government, to go to the mountain as a refuge. | 0:17:57 | 0:18:01 | |
'Mountain is like an identity for them. | 0:18:04 | 0:18:06 | |
That's why the Kurds claim that Kurds have no friends but the mountains. | 0:18:08 | 0:18:14 | |
We had a very harsh time because we never knew what would happen to us. | 0:18:28 | 0:18:33 | |
Every minute, you were under threat that somebody come to the door | 0:18:33 | 0:18:36 | |
or people in the villages, a lot of them, just disappeared. | 0:18:36 | 0:18:40 | |
As-Salamu Alaykum... | 0:18:44 | 0:18:45 | |
In his home town of Duhok in the 1950s, Walid's father formed | 0:18:46 | 0:18:50 | |
the first workers' union. | 0:18:50 | 0:18:52 | |
'He defended the right of the workers and, for that reason, | 0:18:56 | 0:18:59 | |
'he went to prison twice.' | 0:18:59 | 0:19:03 | |
MAN TALKS OWN LANGUAGE | 0:19:07 | 0:19:09 | |
He says in 1963, there was a coup d'etat by the Ba'athist Party. | 0:19:14 | 0:19:19 | |
A policeman and one intelligence serviceman came to the shop where he worked. | 0:19:19 | 0:19:24 | |
They asked him to go to the police station. | 0:19:24 | 0:19:29 | |
So he just found a quick excuse and he ran. | 0:19:29 | 0:19:33 | |
I asked him how long he stayed, and he said for six years. | 0:19:35 | 0:19:39 | |
In the mountains. | 0:19:39 | 0:19:40 | |
This is Saddam's interrogation centre in northern Iraq. | 0:19:51 | 0:19:54 | |
'Any dissent or cry for freedom - even having a typewriter would be | 0:19:56 | 0:20:01 | |
'enough on its own to be in prison.' | 0:20:01 | 0:20:03 | |
It's now a museum and art gallery. | 0:20:06 | 0:20:09 | |
One of the artists who was working here, | 0:20:09 | 0:20:12 | |
he was taking the story from the victims and he makes sculptures. | 0:20:12 | 0:20:16 | |
I call this theatre sculpture. | 0:20:16 | 0:20:20 | |
It's just showing you how was the situation in these spaces here. | 0:20:20 | 0:20:26 | |
Saddam Hussein was using the tanks, like what you see outside, | 0:20:30 | 0:20:35 | |
against the civilian people. | 0:20:35 | 0:20:38 | |
In 1988, Saddam Hussein, the regime, he destroy all the villages | 0:20:40 | 0:20:44 | |
on the border and it was around 5,000 villages. | 0:20:44 | 0:20:49 | |
We had the idea to build a house with something that remain from the families. | 0:20:49 | 0:20:54 | |
The mirror is representing the victims. 182,000 victims. | 0:21:01 | 0:21:07 | |
At Walid's show, the local dignitaries are out in force. | 0:21:28 | 0:21:32 | |
The city's art students are here too. | 0:21:38 | 0:21:42 | |
HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE | 0:21:42 | 0:21:44 | |
TRANSLATION: It's new for me. | 0:21:44 | 0:21:45 | |
I've not seen anything like this in Kurdistan. | 0:21:45 | 0:21:48 | |
It's normally realist art here. This is very new. That's why I like it. | 0:21:50 | 0:21:54 | |
HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE | 0:21:54 | 0:21:57 | |
TRANSLATION: I think Walid wants to go to the top of the mountain, step by step. | 0:21:57 | 0:22:01 | |
HE TALKS IN OWN LANGUAGE | 0:22:01 | 0:22:02 | |
TRANSLATION: The mountain means power. To take power. | 0:22:02 | 0:22:06 | |
Shwan is here. | 0:22:09 | 0:22:11 | |
He's the man responsible for raising money for the Venice show. | 0:22:11 | 0:22:15 | |
He thought it would be easy but it wasn't. | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
The excuse was, why promote art? | 0:22:18 | 0:22:25 | |
Go outside, see what's happening. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:30 | |
We have no schools, no orphanages. | 0:22:30 | 0:22:33 | |
We have no health care. We need electricity. | 0:22:35 | 0:22:38 | |
So, as a big corporation, why should I support art? | 0:22:38 | 0:22:43 | |
They're really looking at putting a band aid on the body | 0:22:43 | 0:22:49 | |
and forgetting all about the soul. | 0:22:49 | 0:22:51 | |
It's quite fortunate that Walid is able to come back here, | 0:22:53 | 0:22:56 | |
with other artists who worked | 0:22:56 | 0:22:59 | |
in Baghdad or in the south. It's a very different situation. | 0:22:59 | 0:23:03 | |
Even some Iraqis that are here now are afraid to go back to Baghdad. | 0:23:03 | 0:23:07 | |
6,000 miles away in New York City, Ahmed Alsoudani is waiting | 0:23:14 | 0:23:19 | |
for the results of the biggest sale of his life. | 0:23:19 | 0:23:23 | |
In London, one of Ahmed's paintings is coming up at Christie's. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
His dealer is here. | 0:23:30 | 0:23:32 | |
-He's in good company, Ahmed, then? -Yeah, he is. | 0:23:32 | 0:23:35 | |
It's quite scary company, isn't it? Isn't it Warhol, Damien Hirst...? | 0:23:35 | 0:23:40 | |
It's very scary. | 0:23:40 | 0:23:41 | |
I think it's appropriate, but it's early days, you know? | 0:23:41 | 0:23:44 | |
He's a young artist. | 0:23:44 | 0:23:46 | |
It is a big deal and it is anxiety-producing. | 0:23:46 | 0:23:49 | |
That picture is owned by Charles Saatchi, and one of several, I take it? | 0:23:49 | 0:23:53 | |
Saatchi owns a number of very good paintings by Ahmed, | 0:23:53 | 0:23:57 | |
and works on paper. | 0:23:57 | 0:23:59 | |
Is this a big moment? A Middle Eastern artist | 0:23:59 | 0:24:02 | |
in this company is quite something, I don't dare say. | 0:24:02 | 0:24:05 | |
Maybe. I don't particularly believe in these kinds of, you know, | 0:24:05 | 0:24:09 | |
regionalist ideas, and if you are a really regional artist, | 0:24:09 | 0:24:13 | |
I think you wouldn't end up in, or even excel in, Christie's! | 0:24:13 | 0:24:16 | |
The Warhol portrait, here it is, | 0:24:16 | 0:24:18 | |
£9,600,000. | 0:24:18 | 0:24:20 | |
Sold... | 0:24:20 | 0:24:22 | |
to the room at £9,600,000. Well done, sir. Paddle number 38. | 0:24:22 | 0:24:26 | |
Lot number 34, the Ahmed Alsoudani. | 0:24:26 | 0:24:29 | |
The 2008 picture. I can start the bidding at £100,000... | 0:24:29 | 0:24:33 | |
He may not be Andy Warhol yet, but he's in the big league. | 0:24:33 | 0:24:36 | |
Ahmed now has a waiting list for his work and show all over the world. | 0:24:36 | 0:24:40 | |
150 is here. | 0:24:40 | 0:24:43 | |
About twice what we would sell... | 0:24:43 | 0:24:46 | |
180,000. | 0:24:46 | 0:24:48 | |
No, no. | 0:24:50 | 0:24:52 | |
The Alsoudani, then, at 180,000, | 0:24:52 | 0:24:56 | |
selling on the far left. | 0:24:56 | 0:24:58 | |
All done. | 0:24:59 | 0:25:00 | |
At £180,000. | 0:25:00 | 0:25:03 | |
Yours, Ingrid. | 0:25:03 | 0:25:05 | |
Oh, it's gone already! | 0:25:11 | 0:25:12 | |
It's gone! That was fast. | 0:25:13 | 0:25:15 | |
So shall I call Ahmed down? | 0:25:15 | 0:25:18 | |
Hi, it's Robert. | 0:25:19 | 0:25:21 | |
I'm just giving you the news - it sold well. It sold... | 0:25:21 | 0:25:24 | |
for £180 plus the commission so it'll be about 325, 330. | 0:25:24 | 0:25:29 | |
Dollars. It's a good result. | 0:25:30 | 0:25:32 | |
OK, speak to you soon, bye. | 0:25:32 | 0:25:34 | |
-Pleased? -Yes. He's like... He's just relieved. | 0:25:35 | 0:25:38 | |
But when you think that two or three years ago | 0:25:38 | 0:25:41 | |
he was selling for 20,000 so... | 0:25:41 | 0:25:44 | |
-that's quite a boost, isn't it? -It was a good investment! | 0:25:44 | 0:25:47 | |
'All this success, I never thought that's going to happen.' | 0:25:50 | 0:25:54 | |
Better this than not this. | 0:25:54 | 0:25:56 | |
No, no, it's really... Yeah. It's great. | 0:25:56 | 0:25:59 | |
It's a lot of pressure, but... | 0:25:59 | 0:26:02 | |
I try to be in my studio and paint as much as I can. | 0:26:02 | 0:26:05 | |
What's going to go to Venice here? | 0:26:05 | 0:26:07 | |
There are four paintings, and they are done. | 0:26:07 | 0:26:10 | |
We're just waiting for probably a couple more weeks | 0:26:10 | 0:26:14 | |
to be shipped. | 0:26:14 | 0:26:16 | |
'Though he was brought up in the Middle East, | 0:26:16 | 0:26:19 | |
'he's also immersed in Western art history.' | 0:26:19 | 0:26:23 | |
It actually almost has everything to do with a painting by Caravaggio. | 0:26:23 | 0:26:28 | |
So, this image, it's here. | 0:26:28 | 0:26:30 | |
This guy, here. | 0:26:31 | 0:26:34 | |
And that, here. | 0:26:35 | 0:26:37 | |
And this guy | 0:26:37 | 0:26:39 | |
is not here because... | 0:26:39 | 0:26:41 | |
he tried to protect Christ also to block the chaos behind his hands. | 0:26:41 | 0:26:48 | |
Behind here. | 0:26:50 | 0:26:51 | |
So I took him out and I show the chaos. | 0:26:51 | 0:26:55 | |
It's risky to show people | 0:26:55 | 0:26:59 | |
where this painting comes from because he's Caravaggio | 0:26:59 | 0:27:03 | |
so the risk comes from... that will destroy my painting, | 0:27:03 | 0:27:07 | |
-but I'm willing to take a risk. | 0:27:07 | 0:27:08 | |
In Helsinki, Ahdal is tussling with the water theme for Venice. | 0:27:11 | 0:27:16 | |
I don't like to show water when I talk about water. | 0:27:16 | 0:27:20 | |
So it was really hard until, like, I came up with an idea. | 0:27:20 | 0:27:23 | |
I don't know if anybody will understand it, but I think it's really connected to water. | 0:27:23 | 0:27:27 | |
He's calling it Consumption Of War. | 0:27:28 | 0:27:31 | |
Explain to me the concept of this. | 0:27:31 | 0:27:33 | |
I thought the best way is to really see the real source of... | 0:27:33 | 0:27:39 | |
the threat of water, or the lack of water, we will have. | 0:27:39 | 0:27:42 | |
It's basically because of the factories and the corporations, they want to be better than each other | 0:27:42 | 0:27:48 | |
and in the end, they have to produce things | 0:27:48 | 0:27:50 | |
and that production is actually sucking in the water. | 0:27:50 | 0:27:53 | |
If you make one pair of jeans, it takes 1,400 gallons of water. | 0:27:54 | 0:27:59 | |
BUZZING | 0:27:59 | 0:28:01 | |
-This is Star Wars? -Exactly, yeah. | 0:28:04 | 0:28:06 | |
It could be like Cain and Abel as well, if you want to go through... | 0:28:08 | 0:28:12 | |
THEY LAUGH | 0:28:12 | 0:28:13 | |
It's the coming war. | 0:28:16 | 0:28:18 | |
It's the next war. | 0:28:18 | 0:28:19 | |
A litre of water right now, drinking water, | 0:28:37 | 0:28:40 | |
is actually more experience than the litre of gas that I put in the car. | 0:28:40 | 0:28:45 | |
That is reality. | 0:28:45 | 0:28:46 | |
I am not going to be so cowboy-ish | 0:28:51 | 0:28:54 | |
as to say yes, there will be war. | 0:28:54 | 0:28:56 | |
I will say that if we do not solve the problem creatively, | 0:28:56 | 0:29:00 | |
there will be tensions, and God knows, we don't need any more tension in this area. | 0:29:00 | 0:29:04 | |
Iraq for ever has been using the Tigris and Euphrates as open sewers. | 0:29:07 | 0:29:11 | |
Essentially, this is sewage from Sulaymaniyah city | 0:29:12 | 0:29:15 | |
which eventually becomes drinking water | 0:29:15 | 0:29:19 | |
for the rest of Iraq. | 0:29:19 | 0:29:21 | |
Looks suspiciously like a nice waterfall which children can go in | 0:29:24 | 0:29:27 | |
and swim. It's an horrific thought, actually. | 0:29:27 | 0:29:31 | |
It's bad enough that animals could come down here and drink. | 0:29:32 | 0:29:36 | |
And this was once Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers, | 0:29:42 | 0:29:47 | |
the Garden of Eden. | 0:29:47 | 0:29:48 | |
The head water of the Tigris and Euphrates come from the mountains of Kurdistan. | 0:29:50 | 0:29:54 | |
Divided between Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Syria. | 0:29:54 | 0:29:57 | |
It is not only being dammed in Turkey, it is also being dammed in Iran. | 0:29:58 | 0:30:02 | |
So we have less and less and less water. | 0:30:04 | 0:30:07 | |
The end result is that within a few years, | 0:30:07 | 0:30:10 | |
agriculture is going to die in the land where it was born. | 0:30:10 | 0:30:14 | |
Up at the fountain head in Kurdistan, | 0:30:21 | 0:30:23 | |
Walida's taking photos of the waterfall, Gali Ali Bag, | 0:30:23 | 0:30:28 | |
for an artwork he's planning for Venice. | 0:30:28 | 0:30:30 | |
This waterfall is very famous in Iraq. | 0:30:30 | 0:30:33 | |
It's like a Mecca for tourists. | 0:30:33 | 0:30:35 | |
This image is even featured on the 5,000 Iraqi note. | 0:30:38 | 0:30:41 | |
You wouldn't think from the weather today, but this waterfall | 0:30:43 | 0:30:47 | |
in the summer dries up and they pump water | 0:30:47 | 0:30:51 | |
to keep it running so that people come and see it. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:54 | |
It's a kind of deceit, isn't it? | 0:30:55 | 0:30:57 | |
They're pumping the water here | 0:30:57 | 0:30:59 | |
-to promote the idea that it is a bountiful... -Yeah, absolutely. | 0:30:59 | 0:31:03 | |
..waterfall. But there isn't any water there. | 0:31:03 | 0:31:05 | |
I mean, in the winter and spring, there is still. | 0:31:05 | 0:31:07 | |
But in the summer, it does dry up. | 0:31:07 | 0:31:09 | |
So this image, will you be making an image like this of the banknote? | 0:31:09 | 0:31:13 | |
That's right. A large image, about five or four-and-a-half metres, | 0:31:13 | 0:31:16 | |
by maybe three metres. | 0:31:16 | 0:31:18 | |
And I will project, from the back, the waterfall. | 0:31:18 | 0:31:23 | |
The Waterfall is one of two works that Walid is preparing for Venice. | 0:31:23 | 0:31:27 | |
In the entrance of the venue in Venice, I will have a wall, | 0:31:27 | 0:31:31 | |
which is quite long, about nine, ten metres. | 0:31:31 | 0:31:34 | |
So I will occupy that wall with stripes to express the tension, | 0:31:34 | 0:31:38 | |
express the need and express the dependence of the land on that river. | 0:31:38 | 0:31:43 | |
That building, which is very run down and tired and crumbling, the walls... | 0:31:45 | 0:31:50 | |
But, as somebody said, that will just fit the state of Iraq as it is now. | 0:31:50 | 0:31:55 | |
The Venice Biennale is the glitziest event | 0:32:16 | 0:32:19 | |
in the international art world calendar. | 0:32:19 | 0:32:22 | |
It's somewhere between the Cannes Film Festival, the Olympics | 0:32:23 | 0:32:26 | |
and an international trade fair. | 0:32:26 | 0:32:29 | |
It takes place on two huge sites. | 0:32:33 | 0:32:36 | |
But on a backwater, a few hundred yards from the other | 0:32:37 | 0:32:40 | |
grand national pavilions, there's a little corner of Iraq. | 0:32:40 | 0:32:44 | |
There's less than a week to go before the show opens to the public. | 0:32:48 | 0:32:52 | |
The six artists will be working together for the first time. | 0:32:53 | 0:32:58 | |
WHIRRING AND CLANKING | 0:32:58 | 0:33:02 | |
'I have been here, like, three, four days. | 0:33:12 | 0:33:15 | |
'It's almost done, actually. Yeah.' | 0:33:15 | 0:33:17 | |
It's just a kind of replica of the video piece room | 0:33:21 | 0:33:25 | |
and kind of really depressing, I want it to be, | 0:33:25 | 0:33:28 | |
with the flickering lights. | 0:33:28 | 0:33:30 | |
'What I like is the contrast between the clean, white wall office | 0:33:31 | 0:33:34 | |
'kind of boring wall and the history, texture, randomness.' | 0:33:34 | 0:33:41 | |
I'm just waiting now. | 0:33:42 | 0:33:44 | |
A speaker needs to be fixed up and it's a bit slow because... | 0:33:44 | 0:33:47 | |
I don't know. Like, people are not working a lot here | 0:33:47 | 0:33:51 | |
and they have holidays. | 0:33:51 | 0:33:53 | |
GLASS SHATTERS | 0:33:53 | 0:33:54 | |
That's much better when you don't see this amount of metal. | 0:33:55 | 0:34:00 | |
SHE SPEAKS IN ITALIAN | 0:34:05 | 0:34:09 | |
For the curator, Mary Angela, it's been a labour of love. | 0:34:09 | 0:34:12 | |
She's hands-on with everything, | 0:34:12 | 0:34:14 | |
from the minutiae of installation to funding. | 0:34:14 | 0:34:17 | |
There's not much to go round. | 0:34:17 | 0:34:19 | |
This is our ladder, because we got it out of the garbage | 0:34:19 | 0:34:22 | |
and we fixed it. | 0:34:22 | 0:34:23 | |
It's broken, crappy, so we got our own ladder. | 0:34:23 | 0:34:27 | |
-What? The ladder? -We fixed it. | 0:34:27 | 0:34:29 | |
It's always, always a problem about the ladder. | 0:34:33 | 0:34:37 | |
There's one ladder. | 0:34:38 | 0:34:40 | |
Let's not talk about the problems, we'll never finish! OK, so... | 0:34:43 | 0:34:47 | |
Ahmed hasn't arrived yet, | 0:34:49 | 0:34:51 | |
so Azad Nanakeli is helping hang his pictures. | 0:34:51 | 0:34:55 | |
A Kurd, like Walid, Azad now lives in Florence. | 0:34:55 | 0:34:59 | |
He left Iraq after leaving art school in Baghdad in the mid-'70s, | 0:34:59 | 0:35:03 | |
when Saddam's grip was tightening. | 0:35:03 | 0:35:05 | |
Did that mean that all the artists who remained under Saddam, really, | 0:35:05 | 0:35:10 | |
in one way or another, had to reflect the triumph of Saddam Hussein? | 0:35:10 | 0:35:15 | |
In the same way that they did in Russia in Stalin's period? | 0:35:15 | 0:35:18 | |
Is that what happened? | 0:35:18 | 0:35:20 | |
I think it's not only Saddam Hussein. | 0:35:20 | 0:35:22 | |
Most of the countries in the Middle East was like that. | 0:35:22 | 0:35:26 | |
Governments politically control everything - | 0:35:26 | 0:35:30 | |
the artists and other things - so that's what happened. | 0:35:30 | 0:35:34 | |
Some artists, poets, others, they left Iraq and I'm one of them. | 0:35:36 | 0:35:40 | |
We were without passports, without nothing and we had a chance. | 0:35:42 | 0:35:48 | |
We worked very hard to be here. | 0:35:48 | 0:35:51 | |
I'm glad to be here. | 0:35:51 | 0:35:53 | |
When I was a child, there was this kind of faucet in my country, | 0:36:01 | 0:36:05 | |
in my city. | 0:36:05 | 0:36:06 | |
One of my...my... One of my nephews died with malaria, the sickness. | 0:36:06 | 0:36:12 | |
The kind of water we have, this was just bad water. | 0:36:12 | 0:36:15 | |
In Africa today, every minute, a person dies for want of clean water. | 0:36:22 | 0:36:27 | |
WATER TRICKLES | 0:36:27 | 0:36:31 | |
Back in Iraq now, | 0:36:45 | 0:36:46 | |
do you think it can redeem itself from the days of Saddam? | 0:36:46 | 0:36:49 | |
Right now, we have other problems, | 0:36:49 | 0:36:52 | |
with also the way that they treat culture, | 0:36:52 | 0:36:55 | |
because there is not enough possibility today to do it. | 0:36:55 | 0:36:59 | |
With the religions and other things, | 0:36:59 | 0:37:01 | |
they don't leave you to do what you want. | 0:37:01 | 0:37:04 | |
I think most of the artists, they have no chance, really, | 0:37:05 | 0:37:08 | |
to do a lot there. | 0:37:08 | 0:37:09 | |
We hope, one day, there is more democracy in these countries, | 0:37:11 | 0:37:14 | |
to have more chance for the artists to... | 0:37:14 | 0:37:17 | |
to change something. | 0:37:17 | 0:37:19 | |
We need it. | 0:37:19 | 0:37:22 | |
The king of the dates. | 0:37:30 | 0:37:32 | |
This has come from Basra. | 0:37:34 | 0:37:36 | |
It's very delicious - do you want to eat? | 0:37:36 | 0:37:38 | |
No. | 0:37:38 | 0:37:40 | |
In Rome, especially, it's hard to find dates from Iraq. | 0:37:40 | 0:37:44 | |
You know, Basra was the most famous region in the world | 0:37:51 | 0:37:54 | |
for producing dates. | 0:37:54 | 0:37:56 | |
And we had 30 millions of palms. | 0:37:58 | 0:38:01 | |
But with the war, Iraq-Iran War, Saddam Hussein cut, | 0:38:09 | 0:38:14 | |
destroyed 20 millions of palms. | 0:38:14 | 0:38:17 | |
So it's a disaster with water and a disaster with the dates. | 0:38:21 | 0:38:25 | |
Ali is making a pyramid of dates - some edible, | 0:38:28 | 0:38:31 | |
some contaminated by salt water and some by uranium. | 0:38:31 | 0:38:36 | |
In 1991, when the war was the Gulf War, | 0:38:36 | 0:38:40 | |
the Americans used uranium | 0:38:40 | 0:38:43 | |
and someone says, like, "This uranium, it goes to the earth." | 0:38:43 | 0:38:48 | |
And the people were afraid to eat the dates. | 0:38:48 | 0:38:52 | |
In the marshlands of the south, | 0:38:55 | 0:38:57 | |
Basra was once the cultural capital of Iraq. | 0:38:57 | 0:39:00 | |
It was known as the Venice of the Orient. | 0:39:03 | 0:39:06 | |
In fact, Europeans said Basra was even more beautiful than Venice, | 0:39:06 | 0:39:10 | |
because it was greener. | 0:39:10 | 0:39:11 | |
It's strange cos this could just be round the corner | 0:39:14 | 0:39:17 | |
here in Venice, couldn't it? | 0:39:17 | 0:39:19 | |
-Yeah. -It looks exactly like... -Exactly. Exactly. | 0:39:19 | 0:39:22 | |
If you want to see the real impact | 0:39:22 | 0:39:25 | |
of the shortage of water, you go to Basra and see the tragedies there. | 0:39:25 | 0:39:30 | |
People are deserting those areas because there is no water, | 0:39:30 | 0:39:34 | |
no agriculture, no...nothing. | 0:39:34 | 0:39:36 | |
Now, as Iraq is trying to regain its normal life, | 0:39:38 | 0:39:41 | |
there is this tragedy with water. | 0:39:41 | 0:39:43 | |
Walid is rushing to get his waterfall piece finished | 0:39:54 | 0:39:58 | |
for the opening in three days' time. | 0:39:58 | 0:40:00 | |
'Since I was young, I always remember to visit this Gali Ali Bag waterfall. | 0:40:00 | 0:40:06 | |
'It was very ironic, because the image of the waterfall on the money, now that money | 0:40:06 | 0:40:11 | |
'is helping the waterfall to carry on.' CHUCKLES | 0:40:11 | 0:40:15 | |
BUZZING OF LIGHT SABRES | 0:40:18 | 0:40:20 | |
Adel's work is now ready. | 0:40:20 | 0:40:23 | |
I like for people to provoke their thoughts, | 0:40:26 | 0:40:29 | |
and like when they come and they see this, and they... | 0:40:29 | 0:40:31 | |
where is the water here. But then, then they see the landscape, | 0:40:31 | 0:40:35 | |
like the image outside, which totally dried, then maybe they will think, | 0:40:35 | 0:40:40 | |
"I will go back and see the video again." | 0:40:40 | 0:40:43 | |
The most extraordinary of all their stories, | 0:40:54 | 0:40:58 | |
is that of Halim Al Karim. | 0:40:58 | 0:41:00 | |
He now lives between Denver and Dubai. | 0:41:00 | 0:41:03 | |
But to escape conscription into the Iran Iraq war, | 0:41:03 | 0:41:06 | |
he hid for nearly three years in a hole in the desert | 0:41:06 | 0:41:10 | |
near the border of Iraq and Saudi Arabia. | 0:41:10 | 0:41:13 | |
HALIM: I decide to hide in the desert | 0:41:13 | 0:41:18 | |
and not to be part of this deceived politics | 0:41:18 | 0:41:24 | |
and not to be part of that violence. | 0:41:24 | 0:41:28 | |
And it impact on me in different ways | 0:41:29 | 0:41:33 | |
but mainly it make me, this hard time, | 0:41:33 | 0:41:39 | |
it make me appreciate more my human value. | 0:41:39 | 0:41:45 | |
And I try to...to say or to explain, | 0:41:45 | 0:41:52 | |
or to express this experience through my art. | 0:41:52 | 0:41:55 | |
How did you survive that? | 0:41:56 | 0:41:59 | |
I make a hole like two metres deep. | 0:41:59 | 0:42:03 | |
I mix clay and grass and I build a dome. | 0:42:03 | 0:42:05 | |
I survive there with the help of an old Iraqi woman. | 0:42:06 | 0:42:11 | |
At that time, she was 75 years old. | 0:42:12 | 0:42:15 | |
She was visiting me or providing me | 0:42:16 | 0:42:19 | |
with water and food every two or three weeks. | 0:42:19 | 0:42:23 | |
And because I study Sumerian civilisation - | 0:42:24 | 0:42:28 | |
they believe in goddesses - | 0:42:28 | 0:42:31 | |
and I thought, "I think that that woman, | 0:42:31 | 0:42:36 | |
"she is the goddess of the desert." | 0:42:36 | 0:42:38 | |
'I became as a new Sumerian. Always when I deal with women | 0:42:43 | 0:42:49 | |
'they are just a goddess for me.' | 0:42:49 | 0:42:52 | |
I think we just need to... | 0:42:53 | 0:42:55 | |
'Of course, in your work many of these women are hidden by the veil. | 0:42:55 | 0:42:59 | |
'You know, the reason that I use the veil to cover my photography... | 0:42:59 | 0:43:05 | |
'it's nothing to do from the Arab or Muslim tradition of women | 0:43:06 | 0:43:12 | |
'when they cover their face. | 0:43:12 | 0:43:14 | |
'But I took this element to express the hidden inner, | 0:43:15 | 0:43:21 | |
'the hidden characters, the hidden desires on human being. | 0:43:21 | 0:43:26 | |
'We cover ourself' | 0:43:28 | 0:43:30 | |
with layers and layers of... | 0:43:30 | 0:43:33 | |
er, of veils. | 0:43:33 | 0:43:36 | |
Ali Assaf's installation | 0:43:44 | 0:43:47 | |
is about what he left behind in Iraq. | 0:43:47 | 0:43:50 | |
After 1980, it became slowly like, you know, | 0:43:56 | 0:44:01 | |
-someone by, um, force, by... -Yes. | 0:44:01 | 0:44:05 | |
..took something from you and you don't want to lose this, | 0:44:05 | 0:44:08 | |
and then you start to live in nostalgia, or in your past - | 0:44:08 | 0:44:14 | |
why I wanted to go but why they don't let me go back. | 0:44:14 | 0:44:18 | |
-So it becomes more and more... -Powerful? | 0:44:18 | 0:44:21 | |
Yeah. And this is... Er, you cannot hear any more your parents, | 0:44:21 | 0:44:25 | |
your brothers. | 0:44:25 | 0:44:26 | |
You cannot write to them, they don't write to you. | 0:44:26 | 0:44:30 | |
It was like someone tell you, "No, you don't do it, you don't do it." | 0:44:30 | 0:44:33 | |
And you feel like a child. | 0:44:33 | 0:44:34 | |
The mother said, "No, don't do it," and you want to do it. | 0:44:34 | 0:44:37 | |
It become then the imagination and the, um... | 0:44:37 | 0:44:43 | |
memories. | 0:44:43 | 0:44:44 | |
When we came back after 20, 25 years, | 0:44:48 | 0:44:51 | |
and you see a kid - your brother was a kid - | 0:44:51 | 0:44:54 | |
now he is a father and big and old, | 0:44:54 | 0:45:00 | |
and you don't know he's my brother or not, you know? | 0:45:00 | 0:45:03 | |
-It's... -This is your brother behind you. -Yeah, there are four brothers. | 0:45:03 | 0:45:06 | |
Four brothers, yeah. | 0:45:06 | 0:45:08 | |
This one, I didn't see him | 0:45:08 | 0:45:12 | |
because he died in 2003 when the American | 0:45:12 | 0:45:15 | |
and English American went to Basra. | 0:45:15 | 0:45:18 | |
He got some troubles with his health | 0:45:18 | 0:45:21 | |
and there was no pharmacy, no medicine. | 0:45:21 | 0:45:24 | |
This is my youngest sister, | 0:45:26 | 0:45:29 | |
she became grandmother. ALAN CHUCKLES | 0:45:29 | 0:45:32 | |
Yeah. This is my youngest brother, he became a grandfather. | 0:45:32 | 0:45:38 | |
Me too - I became old. | 0:45:40 | 0:45:42 | |
And this, is this about the pollution? | 0:45:45 | 0:45:47 | |
These, um... | 0:45:47 | 0:45:48 | |
-I see this is coming from above. -Yeah, yeah. | 0:45:48 | 0:45:52 | |
In 1991 when they start to, um, bomb Iraq, | 0:45:52 | 0:45:58 | |
they saw that the water was like very dark, | 0:45:58 | 0:46:02 | |
raining like oil drops. | 0:46:02 | 0:46:05 | |
The artist who tackles the war and occupation most head-on is Halim. | 0:46:18 | 0:46:23 | |
His take on water is strikingly different from the others. | 0:46:26 | 0:46:30 | |
The Nation's Laundry, what's behind that? | 0:46:31 | 0:46:34 | |
It's about Western governments - | 0:46:34 | 0:46:36 | |
always they try to find solution for their problems | 0:46:36 | 0:46:40 | |
in the East. They wash their dirty clothes in our life. | 0:46:40 | 0:46:48 | |
Our friends the American, they came to Iraq and they say, | 0:46:48 | 0:46:51 | |
"We'd like, or we will help you | 0:46:51 | 0:46:54 | |
"to liberate yourself from the... that regime." | 0:46:54 | 0:46:58 | |
And we welcomed them. | 0:46:59 | 0:47:01 | |
But we discover there is a hidden agenda... | 0:47:01 | 0:47:05 | |
Oil? | 0:47:05 | 0:47:06 | |
-Many things. -And yet... | 0:47:06 | 0:47:07 | |
We don't need to talk about this. It's too obvious. | 0:47:07 | 0:47:10 | |
I am trying to tell them that any time you want to wash your dirty... | 0:47:10 | 0:47:14 | |
-Your dirty linen. -..laundry in our country, always we will resist. | 0:47:14 | 0:47:19 | |
In art, we will resist you. | 0:47:20 | 0:47:23 | |
And blood to blood, we will resist you. | 0:47:23 | 0:47:25 | |
And if we resist you, maybe one day you will stop doing this crime | 0:47:25 | 0:47:32 | |
and then you become more beautiful. | 0:47:32 | 0:47:35 | |
You will be like my goddess. | 0:47:35 | 0:47:38 | |
Do you go back to Iraq from time to time? | 0:47:39 | 0:47:43 | |
I never left Iraq. | 0:47:43 | 0:47:44 | |
Physically, I left Iraq in 1991... | 0:47:44 | 0:47:47 | |
but, um... | 0:47:47 | 0:47:50 | |
..my soul is still there. | 0:47:52 | 0:47:53 | |
I'm still there. | 0:47:55 | 0:47:56 | |
I left Iraq not because I was scared to be killed. | 0:47:57 | 0:48:03 | |
No, I left Iraq to tell our story. Iraqis' story. | 0:48:03 | 0:48:07 | |
And now I'm telling it. | 0:48:09 | 0:48:11 | |
But the work itself is more haunting than accusatory. | 0:48:18 | 0:48:22 | |
What's interesting about all these artists | 0:48:22 | 0:48:25 | |
is that their work suggests rather than tells. | 0:48:25 | 0:48:29 | |
There is obviously a big political dimension to the Iraqi show, | 0:48:29 | 0:48:33 | |
and yet it's politics with a small "P". | 0:48:33 | 0:48:35 | |
I think that what you hope to get from art, also, | 0:48:35 | 0:48:38 | |
is something that you can't get from the news, | 0:48:38 | 0:48:41 | |
so you have more of an emotional understanding. | 0:48:41 | 0:48:46 | |
It's very easy for political work to become too close to reportage, | 0:48:46 | 0:48:50 | |
and I think what impressed me... it's very imaginative. | 0:48:50 | 0:48:53 | |
It's not the expected message that's been delivered in a predictable way. | 0:48:53 | 0:48:58 | |
There's work that...really, it takes a leap, and takes risks. | 0:48:58 | 0:49:04 | |
It's interesting, isn't it, that Ahmed Alsoudani | 0:49:08 | 0:49:11 | |
is also showing alongside Jeff Koons. | 0:49:11 | 0:49:15 | |
He's showing at the Palazzo Grassi, which is a private collection | 0:49:15 | 0:49:19 | |
featuring a lot of the best-known artists in the world, | 0:49:19 | 0:49:22 | |
but six months ago, I bet most of their curators had never heard of them. | 0:49:22 | 0:49:26 | |
It shows just how quickly reputations can be made in the contemporary art world. | 0:49:26 | 0:49:31 | |
We haven't seen Ahmed Alsoudani yet at the Iraqi pavilion, | 0:49:34 | 0:49:38 | |
so we're going upmarket here, upriver. | 0:49:38 | 0:49:41 | |
Hello. How are you? Thanks for coming. | 0:50:06 | 0:50:10 | |
Have you been yet to the Iraqi pavilion? | 0:50:10 | 0:50:14 | |
Yeah, I went a few hours ago. | 0:50:14 | 0:50:16 | |
I went over there, check the place, and it was really interesting. | 0:50:16 | 0:50:19 | |
-It's quite a contrast between here and there! -Huge! Yeah. | 0:50:19 | 0:50:23 | |
Of the artists here, who do you like and admire? | 0:50:23 | 0:50:27 | |
Most of the artists, probably. | 0:50:27 | 0:50:29 | |
All of them except me are big names and very established artists. So I really admire a lot of them. | 0:50:29 | 0:50:34 | |
How did you get in here? I haven't worked it out yet. | 0:50:34 | 0:50:37 | |
-Ohh. -Other than your talent, what else brought you here? | 0:50:37 | 0:50:40 | |
Well, as you know, this collection is a part of the Pinault Foundation. | 0:50:40 | 0:50:47 | |
So, Francois Pinault is one of my fans. | 0:50:48 | 0:50:52 | |
A most important collector. | 0:50:52 | 0:50:54 | |
I have to go tomorrow to the Iraqi pavilion... | 0:50:57 | 0:51:00 | |
for the opening. | 0:51:00 | 0:51:01 | |
Back at the house, time for preparations is nearly up. | 0:51:01 | 0:51:06 | |
The critics are about to arrive to view the show. | 0:51:13 | 0:51:16 | |
-WOMAN: -There's, again, Ali Assaf, who's our interpreter... | 0:51:20 | 0:51:24 | |
It's a timely moment for insights from the Arab world. | 0:51:24 | 0:51:28 | |
This picture is taken from a Mesopotamian batik. | 0:51:31 | 0:51:35 | |
So, Walid...so you have brought Iraq to Venice? | 0:51:35 | 0:51:40 | |
That's right. | 0:51:40 | 0:51:41 | |
All these rooms here tell this story of the tragedy of water | 0:51:41 | 0:51:44 | |
in Iraq, and in the whole of the Middle East. | 0:51:44 | 0:51:46 | |
You go from one room to another and you're still in the same environment. | 0:51:46 | 0:51:51 | |
It really works, I think. | 0:51:51 | 0:51:52 | |
It's nice to see this way, | 0:51:52 | 0:51:55 | |
and each artist will have a different approach | 0:51:55 | 0:51:57 | |
and maybe there is a complementary effort | 0:51:57 | 0:52:00 | |
to make a whole picture of our theme of water. | 0:52:00 | 0:52:04 | |
It's June 2nd, and the whole Biennale opens to the public. | 0:52:17 | 0:52:21 | |
The Iraqi pavilion, too, is open for business. | 0:52:21 | 0:52:24 | |
-Full. I'm sorry. -OK. -That was the limit. | 0:52:24 | 0:52:28 | |
Sorry. People will come down, and then you can go back up. | 0:52:28 | 0:52:32 | |
They're afraid that this building might collapse, | 0:52:32 | 0:52:35 | |
so they're stopping them coming in at the door. | 0:52:35 | 0:52:38 | |
-Every time I see you, you've got a glass in your hand. -It's the time to drink. | 0:52:39 | 0:52:43 | |
After all the stress, you have to chill out. | 0:52:43 | 0:52:45 | |
When you look at it from outside, for me, the home video I don't want to get in. | 0:52:49 | 0:52:53 | |
BUZZING OF LIGHT SABRES | 0:52:53 | 0:52:56 | |
How did you make it... | 0:52:59 | 0:53:01 | |
-That's the trick. -..when they... -That's the trick. | 0:53:01 | 0:53:05 | |
That's the trick? Good trick. | 0:53:05 | 0:53:07 | |
I'm fighting, actually, against many of my compatriots, who believe Iraq has gone, you know? | 0:53:07 | 0:53:14 | |
I don't believe that. | 0:53:14 | 0:53:15 | |
Do you think in next year's Biennale, or perhaps the one after it, | 0:53:15 | 0:53:19 | |
-that the artists who are representing Iraq here may actually live in Iraq? -Correct. | 0:53:19 | 0:53:23 | |
Always remember, this is a pilot project. | 0:53:23 | 0:53:26 | |
I'm sure that in three or four Biennales, | 0:53:26 | 0:53:29 | |
we'll have Iraqi artists who live in Iraq and who'll and thrive in Iraq. | 0:53:29 | 0:53:33 | |
Kids today, unheard of, they do something amazing. | 0:53:33 | 0:53:37 | |
This is very optimistic. It makes everybody proud that Iraq is coming back to the international arena, | 0:53:40 | 0:53:46 | |
that artists are making their footprints on a festival like this in Venice. | 0:53:46 | 0:53:52 | |
This is a great beginning. | 0:53:52 | 0:53:54 | |
It's hard not to feel humbled before a nation that has suffered so much. | 0:54:14 | 0:54:19 | |
But if art can't bathe the wounds of war, | 0:54:23 | 0:54:26 | |
maybe it can do something to help recover what's been lost. | 0:54:26 | 0:54:31 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:54:49 | 0:54:53 | |
E-mail [email protected] | 0:54:53 | 0:54:56 |