TEDxBaghdad 2011 - Maysa Ibrahim
piece of Arts I went okay I went shopping and I Came Upon a quite risque pretty risque exhibition and I asked the teachers at the College of Art is this allowed and they said of course it's allowed we have freedom of expression of course we have freedom of expression we have no audience and every artist needs an audience and yet 3,000 students study art at the College of Art Baghdad today 3,000 students which was eye openening to me because if you if you know that you have no audience and if you know that you pretty much guaranteed no employment why would you study art why art when I was 15 I studied art I applied to art school and I love to paint painting gave me joy it gave me joy it lifted my spirits it gave me a feeling of euphoria creating something new innovating to a receptive audience and when I won the art prize I applied to art school but a small part of me was unsure I wanted to make the world a better place I was 15 years old and I had had this lifechanging decision to make which way do I go um but I I was unsure if art was the way to do it the 15-year-old me was unconvinced of the power of Art and so the 15-year-old me consulted my father and my father who is a scientist drew lots of charts and diagrams all of which pointed to mathematics my father who loves mathematics and hates lawyers so what did I do I became a lawyer I rebelled I rebelled I studied hard rebelliously hard and um I went to Oxford I worked hard I trained at the largest law law firms in the world I still kept a hand in art and I helped with the development of Middle Eastern artists in my SP time with various Charities but the focus my drive and my focus was on nation building that was my role that was my dream and when the United Nations accepted my plan for the mediation of the general public in the drafting of the Constitution of Iraq the permanent constitution of Iraq in 2005 I thought this is my moment this is my chance to make the world a better place and so brigh eyed I managed this program with the Constitutional support unit and the idea was that we imediate and we involve the public well in a sense we delivered our aim and we we delivered a constitution but the end result for me the personal result for me was a realization that that top down nation building was hard it was hard and it was difficult I looked outside the window and I saw a broken country in fact to be honest I didn't even have to look outside the window I was staying here in the Rasheed hotel and it looked very different back then I turned the Taps on in my room one night no water came out I turned them this way and that way and then before I went to bed I was sure I I switched them off or so I thought and I woke up the next day and I had this beautiful dream I was by a stream and it was green and and there was water I could hear water rushing like a waterfall and I opened one up and my shoes floated past me and I had flooded that room the water had returned in the middle of the night I flooded the room so I look outside the window I look inside my room and I see a destroyed country I see a country that is falling apart and people keep saying Iraq is gone Iraq is going the Iraq that we knew is gone um a New York based Iraqi AR artist waat B spoke very poignantly of this point he surgically embedded because he's very Cutting Edge because he's a Pioneer and he's Iraqi he embedded surgically a camera into the back of his head now this might sound a bit strange but it was it was a very powerful piece he recorded everything everything around him from the mundane every detail and it spoke to this fear of loss this fear that you may not see your country again the fear that your country has gone it's it's Iraq is gone so I went home and I thought I rethought my my nation building plans the issue was for me how can you how can you rebuild a nation if the foundations are broken how can you top down build these laws and and so on if the very foundations are broken and the question was where where is the Iraqi soul on what basis do we have a foundation on what basis do we call ourselves Iraqi what is it that makes us call each other Iraqi brothers and Iraqi sisters where's the soul of Iraq well it's our culture it's our culture we've heard some about this today it is the culture is the bedro Rock of Iraq and you speak to any Iraqi today you talk of culture and you talk of our heritage and you'll see a smile on his face or her face you'll see eyes light up you speak about other topics you may get a different reaction but if you speak about culture you're you're on a winner which is why I chose to people about culture today but the point is 98% of the world's countries are built and founded on culture but and the big butt arts arts inspires and translates that Foundation into a country it provides Vision Innovation it's Forward Thinking and it it builds a country in two ways one through communication and two unification and I'm going to go through these points visual art is the ultimate form of communication it transcends boundaries and language and nationality and uh there's an amazing conversation happening in the global Contemporary Art scene with Innovation and creativity and people discussing and pushing the boundaries from the big questions to the trivial from way way to Tracy emmen to Basque but Iraq is not part of this conversation now Iraq and the artists of Iraq they too explore their issues of today their hopes their dreams their fears but unseen and unheard in a vacuum and the danger is that the global art world and the the latest tools of communication are moving so fast that Iraq is in danger of being left behind and it's it's a very dangerous point but with the tools of expression and the latest tools of expression Iraq can become part of this conversation art gives the unheard a voice and it also opens you to empathy I'm going to show you a video for 30 [Music] seconds now this video is a video art piece by Young Iraqi artist that goes on for 9 minutes and I saw this video at the Met of qat and at this Museum I noticed an entranced couple from Japan who spent three hours three hours in front of this 9-minute piece and when they finally met the artist the irony was they couldn't communicate they spoke Japanese and he spoke Arabic in English but they they communicated and there was a meeting point through ART so art can open up these doors of communication news on the other hand has been entranced with Iraq for the last 20 years and uh I mean it's for all the wrong reasons we become a statistic we become dehumanized but when you walk into a gallery you give a piece of art space and attention and those the Japanese captivated couple connected in a way that I don't I doubt a headline could achieve but it's not just the stars of the art world who who stand to benefit from art the tools of communication are so powerful I mean everybody here has had a moment where you've wanted to express yourself a particular way but you haven't found the words the pen Strokes the brush strokes and what a relief it is when you finally able to get your point across and those tools of communication should be open to all but the thing that I I discovered was the most powerful an amazing side of art was unification culture unifies culture unifies in a way that very little else does so many Iraqi artists today in fact I I would bet that pretty much every Iraqi artist today has been inspired by our heritage whether it's whether it's Babylon ishar whether it's the power of Babel or Sumerian love poetry this harking back to our past is inspirational and beautiful and just for a moment perhaps we can forget the painful divisions of today and remember what binds us and what unites us and what inspires us we can go two ways and artists perhaps artists being Visionaries can explore that we can tread this tight rope this dangerous tight rope with slippery slopes either side Division division division division till you're left with this or we can look to a positive future we can we can carve our own path as Iraqis we can carve a path that others haven't because that's what we do that's what Iraqis do we don't follow what the others have done but we Pioneer and we can Pioneer this new vision with the help of our creatives with our Visionaries with our artists and so I discovered that not only do the artists need our help but we need the artists and so back to the College of Art I had turned up shopping on a shopping trip and I I I realized that although I had arrived looking to buy a piece of art Iraqi art now owned me I met The Visionaries I was looking for in in those walls of the College of Art people with real love and appreciation for Iraq people with real real vision and um I said about trying to help them so in completely in response to their uh their requests I basically I carried out a survey and they they told me that um again and again they weren't looking for funding or any any sort of exes they they were looking for the latest tools and they and they kept talking again and again and again about isolation isolation isolation and so we formed this movement to end the isolation and our strategy was to a bring the latest tools and B connect with the outside world we do not promote Exodus but we will bring the international art community to Iraq to invest in Iraq and connect human to Human and the interesting thing is when I spoke to these teachers who are supporting us from NYU Princeton and so on all completely for free they they didn't mention at any point is it dangerous in Iraq but they spoke of it being a real honor to give to a country that has given the world so much medha om in 1944 revolutionized the Middle Eastern Contemporary Art scene she fused used Islamic calligraphy in a free flowing form within the confines and the context of Middle Eastern art and she is now her influence is so prevalent now that she's almost become a cliche shakar Hassan traveled Europe and he brought back a whole movement that he was part of when he embraced Sufism he moved away from the human form to embrace abstract impressionism and whilst over in in the UK Henry Moore who's probably the most influential well-known sculpture of this day Henry Moore was influenced by what he called rather rudely primitive art but um he was the real proponent of Mesopotamian art and the Beautiful Simplicity and the proportions of Mesopotamian art and he influenced the generation and he influen a generation that may even have included the descendants of su the descendants of Mesopotamia Jad Sim and is fat but it's not only Iraq that has gone through these dark times picture a city with power Cuts power Cuts Anarchy looting well this is not Iraq in 2011 this is New York less than 40 years ago New York went through a well Brooklyn New York went through a very dark period but out of this dark period came came beautiful like new forms of Hip Hop street art breakdowns that are huge today and the Renaissance again following the plague third of of Europe wiped out and they produced this beautiful art so I guess my message today is that Iraq is not gone Iraq is not gone they can drown our libraries and turn our Tigris blue they can loot our museums they can flatten our Babylons but Mesopotamia is alive in every one of you you all embody 10,000 years of civilization and we are all we are all young Mesopotamians let the cultural ambassadors our artists hold the flame and represent us on a world stage let's invest in our artists so that they can be heard imagine imagine if Iraqi art had an audience today thank [Applause] you