The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

33 ARTISTS Once Upon A Time... Hadiqat Al Umma (top: detail; below: installation view) 2017 9-channel HD video, 16:9, 8:10 minutes, colour, sound / Commissioned by Barjeel Foundation / Courtesy: The artist and Ayyam Gallery, Dubai Born 1960, Baghdad, Iraq Lives and works in Amersfoort, the Netherlands Sadik Kwaish Alfraji uses drawing, painting and animation to navigate the experience of loss felt by those living in exile. In 2010, he began the project ‘Once Upon a Time’ in response to the death of his father and the artist's return to Iraq after 20 years. For Alfraji, the gaps he observed between his memories of Baghdad and its present-day realities reminded him of this storytelling phrase: ‘These words pull us towards memories and times, things and places, images and people that cannot be separated from us'. 1 He began to explore his childhood experiences of civic space, particularly the experience of visiting the National Museum in Baghdad to view the collections of Assyrian and Sumerian reliefs, which were looted after the invasion of Iraq by US forces in 2003. Once Upon A Time... Hadiqat Al Umma 2017 takes as its inspiration the small public gardens of Hadiqat Al Umma (‘the Nation’s Park’, formerly opened as King Ghazi Garden in 1937) in Baghdad’s lively Bab Al-Sharqi area. As a child, Alfraji would visit the area with his father and spend hours marvelling at the flora, fountains and public artworks before visiting the neighbouring cinemas to see popular Arab and Hollywood films. Since the First Gulf War in 1990–91, much of Hadiqat Al Umma has fallen into disrepair, yet for Alfraji, the gardens continue to represent a gateway to his imagination where he can envisage all sorts of magical undertakings. The work draws from the iconography of four artworks located in the park made by the leading artists of Iraqi Modernism: the figures from Faiq Hassan’s (1914–92) mosaic mural Women and Birds 1958 and The Revolution Monument 1958; the El Haria (Liberty) monument designed by architect Rifat Chadirji (b.1926), comprising 25 bronze figures and animals by Jawad Saleem (1919–61); and the sculpture Umuma (Motherhood) 1961 by Khaled Al-Rahal (1926–87). These works are some of Iraq’s most iconic landmarks and were commissioned to commemorate the country’s independence after the 1958 coup d’état that eliminated British colonial rule. While they represent a struggle for justice and liberty — and a secular national identity free of Ottoman rule or British occupation — they are also reminders of the optimism and freedom that would be lost with the militarised state and dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, and the ensuing wars. Sadik Kwaish Alfraji's installation comprises more than 14 000 animated charcoal drawings presented across a panorama of nine screens. The scale of the installation prevents viewers from seeing all its intricacies at once; instead, we catch fragments and fleeting moments of action that mimic the sensation of walking through the park and its surrounding architecture. The installation brings the artworks to life and imbues them with a sense of whimsical fascination. As Alfraji describes: These shadows were my family that waited for me in the park every day; the peasants, the mother and child, the soldier and worker, the rebel, the prisoner and the martyr, the pigeon, the horse and the bull, people from all around, northerners and southerners, birds, spikes, moons and suns all floating there, up in the sky, waiting for me. 2 José Da Silva Endnotes 1 Artist statement in The House That My Father Built 2010; reproduced in Once Upon a Time: Hadiqat Al Umma [exhibition catalogue], Maraya Art Centre, Sharjah, 2017, p.11. 2 Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, quoted in Once Upon a Time , p.26. Sadik Kwaish Alfraji