Video: Sadik Kwaish Alfraji
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The House That My Father Built
Filmed on October 14, 2011, at “Pivot: AIGA Design Conference”
About this video
War, philosophy, culture, change and alienation have contributed to shaping
Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji both as a creator of art and human
being. Alfraji discusses the context and meaning behind his most
recent work, The House That My Father Built, and the deep, emotional
force it releases. Examples of his very early graphic work, more recent
print work, and video clips and images of his family, city and war
help put art and design into both global and intimately personal
contexts.
Speaker bio
Born in Baghdad in 1960, Sadik Kwaish Alfraji studied at the Institute of Fine
Arts and the Academy of Fine Arts in Iraq. In 2000, he earned a high
diploma in graphic design from the CHK Constantijn Huygens in the
Netherlands, where he is now based. Having participated in countless
exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe, Asia and the United States since
the 1980s, he has work housed in the collections of the National Museum
of Modern Art in Iraq, the National Gallery of Fine Arts, the Shoman
Foundation in Jordan, the Novosibirsk State Art Museum in Russia and the
Cluj-Napoca Art Museum in Romania. Recently, he was commissioned to
produce new work for Told/Untold/Retold, one of the inaugural
exhibitions of Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in Doha, Qatar. His
pursuit of art as a profession began in the 1980s in Baghdad. Much of
his work explores the expressionistic intensity of the graphic, and
focuses on the ideas and concepts of human existence. A visual artist,
print maker and designer, Alfraji has often blended art and philosophy
as a means of expanding the formulistic and conceptual boundaries of his
aesthetic. His haunting mixed media compositions explore a variety of
themes, including everything from the universal human condition to
experiences of exile and fragmentation.