Hanaa Malallah : Ruins and Research

 

 

 

I first met Hanaa Malallah in 2007 just after she came to London from  war torn Iraq. .  Above you see her applying burned and shredded  canvas to one of  her works  The burning of her canvas was her response to the  nightmare of destruction she faced in Baghdad every time she walked  down the street

 

 

In 2007 we went to the British Museum and visited the art from Mesopotamia

Here Hanaa explains  how the Royal Game  of Ur was  played

I returned to the British Museum on my recent trip

 

Games are a theme in Hanaa’s work. She is also knowlegable about mathematics and semiotics. So nothing is simple in experiencing her art. She speaks of the historical study of other symbolic systems. “Logic is elaborated by philosophy to examine ancient art”

In this statement she is thinking about Shakir Hassan al Said whom she studied with in Baghdad. He wrote her a series of letters in the late 1990s when he was living in Jordan and Hanaa was experiencing the severe sanctions in Iraq. She answered him in 2004 in the depths of the American attacks on Baghdad published in This Green is not Green,2021.

 

Both of the paintings below are complex references to those ideas

 

Let us move to  the present!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In our recent visit to her studio she showed us her new work. Above she stands in front of a lion of Babylon made of cardboard and labelled “My Museum” In the middle printed on a brick shaped form is the word looted .” We saw another replica of this lion  in  the British Museum, the label said the original had been moved to Berlin.

 

 

That is where the Ishtar Gate  and other artifacts  from Babylon were taken after being stolen  from  Babylon by the 19th century archeologists. In the 20 th century American archeologists  built a structure on top of Nufur using mudbrick slabs from the site with cuneiform inscriptions!

 

They painted the walls with a crude mural of current archologistts at the site mixed with goddesses.

 

 

 

Another project based on archeology is “Co-Existent Ruins “Exploring Iraq’s Mesopotamian past through contemporary art.”

She invited seveal contemporary artists to go to Ur, Nirud

and Nufur and interact with them in various ways

 

 

assuming pose honoring the famous ruler Gudea of Lagash

 

 

At Nimrud, destroyed by ISIS, locating a remnant ( a hand) of original Assyrian monument. (video still) These intersections with contemporary artists explore

“the critical question of how contemporary collaborative art projects can enable a renewed engaaagement with this ancient heritage and history”( Quote from brochure “Co-existent ruins, Exploring Iraq’s Mesopotamian past through Contemporary art”

 

She wrote for another exhibition brochure

 

“My practice addresses the difference between the remains of a Civilization (Ruins) in contrast with the remains that are precipitated by human destruction and armed conflict  ( (Rubble)

My work reflects upon my own experiences in Iraq, I postulate that the region embraces both Ruins and Rubble. Ruins of the remnants of Mesopotamian archaeological sites, that position themselves as  a constant “time travel”, the physical evidence of a  society long past, yet still holding deep connections to our present and future. By contrast “Rubble” that is the palpable outcome of lethal effects of  war chaos and human destruction indicating a loss of culture and identity.

These small objects of mine will suggest I am concerned with tackling the possibilities for addressing ruins and rubble as a new aesthetic that attends to this history, the latent power of ruins in the present as that which might provide for a new relation between past and present”

 

 

Another long term  project is about the ruthless U.S.  bombing of the Public Shelter 25 in the Al Amiryia region of  Baghdad in 1991. 400 people were killed;in a book about the disaster only 100 people were identified with photographs. She/He Has No  Picture is Hanaa’s response

 

She went to visit the shelter  “A toxic smell of smoke and charerd bodies permeated the air”. Many years later she has been able to create faces for the victims with layers of burnt  canvas.

 

 

 

 

A  current project is exploring the legacy of Gertrude Bell. Bell was hired by the British to  demarcate borders in the Middle East. Hanaa is pulling quotes from Bell’s letters that reveal how terribly colonial she was.

 

A quote froom Lawrence of Arabia

 

…it’s shocking how the East has wound  itself around my heart till don’t know which is me and which is it. I never lose the sense of it. I’m acutely conscious always of its charm and grace which do not seem to wear thin with familiarity. I ‘m more a citizen of Bagdad (Sic) than many a Bagdadi born, and I’ll wager that no Bagdadi cares more, or half so much, for the beauty of the river or the palm gardens or cling more closely to the right of citizenship which I have acquired. . .”Gertrude Bell

 

Hanaa has been appointed artist in Residence at the British Museum this year. She is now included in major exhibitions in many contries.She is an artist of extraordinarily rich intellectual interests as she works with the materiality of art . She explores her relationship betwwn human and natural worlds and between the material and the virtual, the organic and the symbolic.

 

 

“Stones” Our Ancestors” Dove = Drone