'Visualizing Grief: Iraqi Women, Longing and Loss'

This talk, presented by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, explores the way artmaking in Iraq has been transformed in the last few decades from the 1970s to the present time. It argues that Iraqi artists, notably women, have been actively engaged, both intellectually and creatively, to heal imperial wounds. These wounds are a direct result of the geopolitics of war, military occupations, displacement, migration, trauma and violence that created contestation among Iraqis. This study also analyzes the remaking of Iraqi identities through a gendered perspective, where Iraqi women are no longer the imagined repositions of the patriarchal society of state but become the image creators themselves.