Baghdadia: Recent Episodes
Nina Mussa
Women of the Middle East are often considered to be held captive, silent, and oppressed. In an attempt to combat this perception, and also to shed light on the importance of Iraqi art and history, Baghdadia was created. Baghdadia features Iraqi women with involvement in the art world, whether they are artists themselves, curators, or even professors on the ancient Near East. Listen to hear the stories and advice of strong Iraqi women and celebrate the richness of Iraqi heritage!
Rand Abdul Jabbar is a young Iraqi artist who engages in a multi-disciplinary approach to creative output, oscillating across the threshold between design, architecture, and the visual arts. Her research based art is often informed by ancient Mesopotamian culture, drawing inspiration from Assyrian and Babylonian architecture, archaeology and mythology. Throughout her process, she often borrows from and reconstruct the ephemera of place, history, and memory, employing design, sculpture and installation as primary mediums of operation. Listen to learn about Rand's personal history, her inspirations, and her creative process.
Dr. Zainab Bahrani is an Iraqi professor of Ancient Near Eastern Art and Archaeology at Columbia University. She is the author and editor of twelve books and has written over 50 articles, one of which, the Hellenization of Ishtar, is particularly fascinating to me. In it, she analyzes concepts of the body and ideologies of gender in both ancient Greece and the Near East. Another aspect of Bahrani’s work has been in the area of monument preservation, conservation and the politics of cultural heritage. Listen to learn about gender and the ancient cradle of civilization and why we should all look to preserve the historical record!
Wassan Al-Khudhairi is the Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM). Serving as the Founding Director of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, Al-Khudhairi oversaw the opening of the Museum in 2010 and co-curated Sajjil: A Century of Modern Art. Her curatorial interests center around modern and contemporary art from the Arab world, with a particular emphasis on Iraq. In 2021, she has been appointed as one of the Focus curators for the Armory Show.
Born in Basra to an Iraqi father and Palestinian mother, Sama Alshaibi is based in the US where she is Professor and Co-Chair of Photography, Video and Imaging at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Her photographs and videos situate her own body as a site of performance in consideration of the social and gendered impacts of war and migration. Sama’s work has been featured in many biennales and solo exhibitions. She was also awarded a Fulbright Scholar Fellowship in 2014. In 2021, she has been named a Guggenheim fellow for her work in photography. In this episode, you’ll learn about Sama’s fascinating personal history, inspirations, and goals for her next projects.