Baghdadi Mem/Wars
Sama Alshaibi & Dena Al-Adeeb
The collaborative project titled Baghdadi Mem/Wars is a project in three suite series: Still/Chaos, Efface/Remain and Absence/Presence. Its conceptual premise is rooted in the corporal, the intellectual and emotional embodiment of war and displacement. Emanating from the artists’ lived experiences and bodily memory of a lifetime in the trenches of an undying war, Baghdadi Mem/Wars paints the landscape of their brush with annihilation. The psychosomatic narrative manifests and replays on the topography of body, memory, and spirit.
Still/Chaos, 9 images at 20 in x 20 in each, digital archival print, 2010 ed. 5 + 2 AP
Still/Chaos: Trapped in a collapsing white padded room, two female protagonists (performed by the artists themselves) negotiate human deprivation. The white padded room resembles an insane asylum and a state of mind. Their lived experiences are performed in the embodiment of war and dislocation. In an increasingly enclosing space, the figures are propelled into one another with an intensifying interaction that crafts the dual faces of survival, rebellion, and resignation.
