Burning bridges

‘Contemporary Art Iraq’ is a collaboration between Cornerhouse, a Manchester arts and film centre, and Artrole, a London-based organisation led by Iraqi artist Adalet R. Garmiany. It is the first time that contemporary art from Iraq has been shown in the UK since the first Gulf War. Producing the exhibition has been a long, complicated process given Iraq’s ongoing instability and damaged art infrastructure.
 

Under Saddam Hussein, many artists went to the United States or Europe. But, more recently, there has been a resurgence of activity led by artists from Iraqi Kurdistan, and it was there that Artrole held the first post-war arts and culture festival last November. Following a call-out across Iraq for artists to submit work, we selected 19 artists. They are a relatively young, unknown group and their artworks deal with a variety of issues, be it voting rights, traffic congestion or women in prison. Several pieces deal with conflict, but this generation doesn’t want to be defined by the country’s politics, and there’s an exciting sense of optimism emerging.
As with all contemporary art exhibitions, it was expected that the artists would attend the opening. We expected difficulty in arranging visas and concentrated on bringing over three of the artists and two academics. A specialist solicitor assisted us with the process. Our efforts proved fruitless: all five were denied entry to
the UK.
The British Embassy in Iraq, which helped us with this exhibition, is not currently issuing UK visas. Therefore, Iraqis wanting to come to Britain must go to Lebanon or Jordan. Our five invited guests travelled to Beirut and stayed for three weeks waiting for their visas to be processed. The artists and academics were due to stay in England for a week, travelling on a business visit visa. They were not being employed or paid, nor were they producing any work here, but in order to apply for their visas we had to pre-book their entire UK trip – including non-refundable flights.
The difficulty of obtaining UK visas for international artists and the recent changes to the system which make it more difficult, has affected many other cultural events across the country. Following the war and the subsequently ineffective reconstruction efforts, now is the time to be building cultural bridges, not burning them.