Catalogue > At random

`Tonight’s programme` toys with history to construct a new realm in between, merging Duke Ellington’s 1963 performance at Khuld hall in Baghdad with Saddam’s bloody coup in the same space 16 years later. Eyal creates a fictional space to provide a different history and a different world for those victims in the hall, a gate of annunaki through which the dead and lost can reclaim their place. “Don’t let anyone kill your daughter in the underworld. don’t let your precious metal be alloyed with the dirt of the underworld. don’t let your precious lapis lazuli be split there with the mason’s stone. don’t let your boxwood be chopped up there with the carpenter’s wood.” – Words by inana of the underworld, the land of no return.

Ali Eyal`s (b. Baghdad, 1994) work spans across different media. He holds an undergraduate degree from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad. His work explores the complex relationships between community and politics using different media such as video, photography and painting, in order to examine social attitudes, particularly in the context of Baghdad and Iraq. Eyal has exhibited in several group shows in Baghdad, Egypt, Lebanon, USA, Greece, and Cuba, among others.