ELIZABETH RAUH: The Epic of Martyrs: Heroic Imagery and Shi‘i Muslim Mythologies in 1960s Iraq
Art History Colloquium
February 21, 2020
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
Following the 1963 Ba‘ath Party coup d’état and overthrow of the Republic of Iraq’s Prime Minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, several prominent artists began producing works and exhibitions responding to the ensuing massacres and oppression of government supporters and Iraqi Communist Party members. While drawing upon collective motifs of the heroic worker, farmer, and soldier in Iraqi Republican-era visual culture, these artistic activities also incorporated representations and motifs drawn from Shi‘i Islamic artistic traditions.
Aware of the mobilizing forces and emotional resonances of Shi‘i mourning ceremonies, artists sought to wield representations of this tragic event in their works in order to express contemporary dissent, grievance, and injustice. Along with other leftist-driven activities, images of the Battle of Karbala in post-1963 Baghdad took on presentist revolutionary and mythic potential as the religious traditions of Iraq’s majority Shi‘i Muslims were transformed into politically effective and creative modes of protest by artists who labored to craft counter-positions to the new Iraqi Ba‘ath Party regime.
Dr. Elizabeth Rauh is a Visiting Assistant Professor in UIC's Department of Art History specializing in Islamic art history and contemporary art practices in Iran and the Arab World. Along with research in decolonial modernity and transnational Middle Eastern visual cultures, she studies early modern Persianate book arts, Shi‘i Islamic traditions, and issues of image making across different eras in Islamic history. Her research has been funded by The American Academic Research Institute in Iraq, the Darat al Funun Center for Modern and Contemporary Arab Art, the Max Weber Foundation, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Date posted
Jan 21, 2020
Date updated
Jan 21, 2020