Letters to my father

Sallām ʻAṭā Ṣabrī, Tamara Chalabi, Shwan Ibrahim Taha, Philippe van Cauteren, Dirk Verbiest

Salam Atta Sabri (°1953, Iraq) lives and works in Baghdad. He is a former lecturer at the Institute of Folkloric Arts, Baghdad and from 2010 to 2015 he was the director of the National Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad. Having lived in the USA and Jordan for 16 years, Sabri returned to Baghdad in 2005. His work deals directly with the experience of returning to a country so changed by conflict. Despite working in the arts all of his life and initially training as a ceramicist, Atta Sabri kept all of his own works of draughtsmanship out of the public eye until he participated in the Ruya Foundation's exhibition 'Invisible Beauty', the National Pavilion of Iraq at the 56th Venice Biennale. 'Letters To My Father' is an art book that presents a set of drawings by Salam Atta. Like a stream of consciousness, the images flow into a story. They are a personal testimony of an artist who recalls...