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Sadik Kwaish Alfraji
Sadik Kwaish Alfraji (b. Baghdad, 1960) is an Iraqi multi-media artist, photographer, animator, video producer and installation artist noted for producing "existentialist" works with dark, shadowy figures that speak of human frailty. Life and career Sadik Kwaish Alfraji was born in Baghdad in 1960. His initial training was as a painter and printmaker, obtaining first a Diploma of Plastic Art and Painting from Baghdad's Institute of Fine Arts (1982) and later a Bachelor of Arts from Baghdad's Academy of Arts (1987). He studied art not long after Saddam Hussein came to power. Like many other artists, Alfraji realised that the Ba'ath Party was attempting to co-opt art and culture for use as propaganda. However, artists have the ability to play around with concepts, and they began to conceal their intended message using abstraction and other techniques to construct messages of protest that the authorities could not understand. “Dictators are stupid,” he noted, “They won’t n ...
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Baghdad
Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. In 762 CE, Baghdad was chosen as the capital of the Abbasid Caliphate, and became its most notable major development project. Within a short time, the city evolved into a significant cultural, commercial, and intellectual center of the Muslim world. This, in addition to housing several key academic institutions, including the House of Wisdom, as well as a multiethnic and multi-religious environment, garnered it a worldwide reputation as the "Center of Learning". Baghdad was the largest city in the world for much of the Abbasid era during the Islamic Golden Age, peaking at a population of more than a million. The city was largely destroyed at the hands of the Mongol Empire in 1258, resulting in a decline that would linger through many c ...
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Saddam Hussein
Saddam Hussein ( ; ar, صدام حسين, Ṣaddām Ḥusayn; 28 April 1937 – 30 December 2006) was an Iraqi politician who served as the fifth president of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party, and later, the Ba'ath Party (Iraqi-dominated faction), Baghdad-based Ba'ath Party and its regional organization, the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party – Iraq Region, Iraqi Ba'ath Party—which espoused Ba'athism, a mix of Arab nationalism and Arab socialism—Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup (later referred to as the 17 July Revolution) that brought the party to power in Iraq. As vice president under the ailing General Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr, and at a time when many groups were considered capable of overthrowing the government, Saddam created security forces through which he tightly controlled conflicts between the government and the armed forces. In the early 1970s, Saddam nationalised the ...
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Ba'ath Party (Iraqi-dominated Faction)
The Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party (spelled "Ba'th" or "Baath", "resurrection" or "renaissance"; ar, حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي ''Ḥizb al-Ba‘th al-‘Arabī al-Ishtirākī''), also referred to as the pro-Iraqi Ba'ath movement, is a Ba'athist political party which was headquartered in Baghdad, Iraq until 2003. It is one of two parties (with identical names) which emerged from the 1966 split of the original Ba'ath Party. In 1966, the original Ba'ath Party was split in half; one half was led by the Damascus leadership of the Ba'ath Party which established a party in Syria and the other half with its leadership in Baghdad. The two Ba'ath parties retained the same name and maintained parallel structures in the Arab world, but relations became so antagonistic that Syria supported Iran against Iraq during the bloody Iran–Iraq War; it also joined the U.S.-led coalition against Iraq in the Gulf War. The Ba'athists seized power in Iraq for the first time in ...
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Iran–Iraq War
The Iran–Iraq War was an armed conflict between Iran and Iraq that lasted from September 1980 to August 1988. It began with the Iraqi invasion of Iran and lasted for almost eight years, until the acceptance of United Nations Security Council Resolution 598 by both sides. Iraq's primary rationale for the attack against Iran cited the need to prevent Ruhollah Khomeini—who had spearheaded Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979—from exporting the new Iranian ideology to Iraq; there were also fears among the Iraqi leadership of Saddam Hussein that Iran, a theocratic state with a population predominantly composed of Shia Muslims, would exploit sectarian tensions in Iraq by rallying Iraq's Shia majority against the Baʽathist government, which was officially secular and dominated by Sunni Muslims. Iraq also wished to replace Iran as the power player in the Persian Gulf, which was not seen as an achievable objective prior to the Islamic Revolution because of Pahlavi Iran's economi ...
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Expressionism
Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas. Expressionist artists have sought to express the meaningVictorino Tejera, 1966, pages 85,140, Art and Human Intelligence, Vision Press Limited, London of emotional experience rather than physical reality. Expressionism developed as an avant-garde style before the First World War. It remained popular during the Weimar Republic,Bruce Thompson, University of California, Santa Cruzlecture on Weimar culture/Kafka'a Prague particularly in Berlin. The style extended to a wide range of the arts, including expressionist architecture, painting, literature, theatre, dance, film and music. The term is sometimes suggestive of angst. In a historical sense, much older painters such as Matthia ...
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Existentialism
Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence, and the role of personal agency in transforming one's life. In the view of an existentialist, the individual's starting point is phenomenological, grounded in the immediate direct experience of life. Key concepts include " existential angst", a sense of dread, disorientation, confusion, or anxiety in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world, and also authenticity, courage, and human-heartedness. Existentialism is associated with several 19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who shared an emphasis on the human subject, despite often profound differences in thought. Among the earliest figures associated with existentialism are philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche and novel ...
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Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale (; it, La Biennale di Venezia) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy by the Biennale Foundation. The biennale has been organised every year since 1895, which makes it the oldest of its kind. The main exhibition held in Castello, in the halls of the Arsenale and Biennale Gardens, alternates between art and architecture (hence the name ''biennale''; ''biennial''). The other events hosted by the Foundationspanning theatre, music, and danceare held annually in various parts of Venice, whereas the Venice Film Festival takes place at the Lido. Organization Art Biennale The Art Biennale (La Biennale d'Arte di Venezia), is one of the largest and most important contemporary visual art exhibitions in the world. So-called because it is held biannually (in odd-numbered years), it is the original biennale on which others in the world have been modeled. The exhibition space spans over 7,000 square meters, and artists from ov ...
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Iraqi Art
Iraqi art is one of the richest art heritages in world and refers to all works of visual art originating from the geographical region of what is present day Iraq since ancient Mesopotamian periods. For centuries, the capital, Baghdad was the Medieval centre of the literary and artistic Arab world during the Abbasid Caliphate, in which Baghdad was the capital, but its artistic traditions suffered at the hands of the Mongol invaders in the 13th century. During other periods it has flourished, such as during the reign of Pir Budaq, or under Ottoman rule in the 16th century when Baghdad was known for its Ottoman miniature painting. In the 20th century, an art revival, which combined both tradition and modern techniques, produced many notable poets, painters and sculptors who contributed to the inventory of public artworks, especially in Baghdad. These artists are highly regarded in the Middle East, and some have earned international recognition. The Iraqi modern art movement had a pro ...
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List Of Iraqi Artists
The following is a list of important artists, including visual arts, poets and musicians, who were born in Iraq, active in Iraq or whose body of work is primarily concerned with Iraqi themes or subject matter. Note: This article uses Arabic naming customs: the name "al" (which means 'from a certain place') or "ibn" or "ben" (which means 'son of') are not used for alphabetical indexing. Artists are listed alphabetically by their paternal family name. For example, the Iraqi artist Hashem Muhammad al-Baghdadi, is listed under "B" for Baghdadi, the paternal family name while the artist Zigi Ben-Haim, is listed under "H" for Haim. A *Faraj Abbo (1921-1984) artist, theatre director, designer, author and educator * Firyal Al-Adhamy (also known as Ferial al-Althami) (b. 1950) hurufiyya artist, calligrapher * Kajal Ahmad (b. 1967 Kirkuk) Kurdish-Iraqi poet *Najiba Ahmad (b. 1954) poet * Modhir Ahmed (born 1956), visual artist * Sadik Kwaish Alfraji (b. Baghdad, 1960), multi-media ar ...
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Abstract Painters
Abstract may refer to: * ''Abstract'' (album), 1962 album by Joe Harriott * Abstract of title a summary of the documents affecting title to parcel of land * Abstract (law), a summary of a legal document * Abstract (summary), in academic publishing * Abstract art, artistic works that do not attempt to represent reality or concrete subjects * '' Abstract: The Art of Design'', 2017 Netflix documentary series * Abstract music, music that is non-representational * Abstract object in philosophy * Abstract structure in mathematics * Abstract type in computer science * The property of an abstraction * Q-Tip (musician) Kamaal Ibn John Fareed (born Jonathan William Davis, April 10, 1970), better known by his stage name Q-Tip, is an American rapper, record producer, singer, and DJ. Nicknamed The Abstract, he is noted for his innovative jazz-influenced style of ..., also known as "The Abstract" * Abstract and concrete See also * Abstraction (other) {{Disambiguation ...
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Artists From Baghdad
An artist is a person engaged in an activity related to creating art, practicing the arts, or demonstrating an art. The common usage in both everyday speech and academic discourse refers to a practitioner in the visual arts only. However, the term is also often used in the entertainment business, especially in a business context, for musicians and other performers (although less often for actors). "Artiste" (French for artist) is a variant used in English in this context, but this use has become rare. Use of the term "artist" to describe writers is valid, but less common, and mostly restricted to contexts like used in criticism. Dictionary definitions The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' defines the older broad meanings of the term "artist": * A learned person or Master of Arts. * One who pursues a practical science, traditionally medicine, astrology, alchemy, chemistry. * A follower of a pursuit in which skill comes by study or practice. * A follower of a manual art, such as a m ...
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