Archiving Art in Iraq's October 2019 Protests

Centred on Baghdad’s iconic Tahrir Square but also in many cities and towns across the country, protests since 2003 saw hundreds of thousands of Iraqis call for change to the country’s politics. Iraq’s youth, who make up most of the country’s population, have asked for nothing less than a complete overhaul of the political system that the US Occupation had installed from 2003. In the process of imagining and calling for a new Iraq to the one they had grown up with, a new body of artwork was created by a new generation of Iraqi artists. 

This project is about those Iraqi artists and the artwork they created, specifically exploring the major protests of October 2019. It explores the ways in which Iraqi artists through their artistic expressions attempted to reclaim Iraq from nearly twenty years of foreign military occupation, militarism, conflict and sectarianism. Iraqi Protest Art is an outcome of state collapse, and the absence of basic social and human rights are expressed vividly in the collection of artworks reproduced here. 

In October 2019 protests’ art production – including murals, graffiti, posters, photography, paintings, photomontage and still images but also other forms of artistic expression - we see a different Iraq to the one that has been depicted in mainstream global media. Religion, women’s rights, dignity, foreign interference, corruption, and loss are some of the many themes that are covered in Iraqi Protest Art. That body of visual artwork, of which a cross-section is explored in this research, represents collectively an archive of a key period in Iraq’s recent history. As such, this study is about documenting recent Iraqi history through the newly established spaces crafted through the process of art production to bring forth a new Iraq imagined by its youth.

Those artworks range in style and content, much of which looked to Iraq’s history and society to overcome, through their portrayals and new interpretations, damaging post-2003 politics. We see a great wealth of artwork that depict how artists attempted to represent protests but also to overcome human injustices and the degradation of human dignity that have come to characterise everyday life. More specifically, this study explores how visual art was deployed most effectively in the October 2019 protests to counter the dominance of political elites who continue to reproduce Iraq’s sectarian and political quota-based system, known as ‘Muhasasa’ that was widely criticised by protestors. It examines the ways in which pertinent everyday life issues have been expressed through the eyes of young artists who effectively became one of the key voices of the movement. 

Iraq’s national protest movement constituted a major shock to the country’s post-2003 politics. Whilst protests have erupted during different periods of time, the October 2019 demonstrations in major Iraqi cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Nassriyah and Basrah, represented a movement that asked for nothing less than complete overhaul of the way in which the country has been managed. Those calls for change by Iraq’s youth, who make up most protestors, have been represented in thousands of new art works that explored themes of religion, women’s rights, dignity, foreign interference and corruption. 

This project explores those themes, examining how the past and symbols of renewal and protest have been negotiated and expressed in new, creative and artistic ways to contest the status quo and envision an Iraq that is representative and responsive to the needs of its people. The project captures this moment in Iraq’s recent history, analysing the creation of a new body of public art - effectively a cultural archive connected to recent political events - and explores the ways in which protests and calls for change have been expressed through Iraqi artists.  

The body of visual artwork produced since October 2019 was inspired by the changing trajectories of the protests. It is due to the events of the protests and the ways in which they evolved in Iraq that we witness a great wealth of diverse art produced in response to those everyday events. With a view to shedding light on those dynamics, the project documents Iraq’s Protest Movement since October 2019 – known as ‘Tishreen Revolution in Iraq – through an analysis of murals, graffiti, posters, photography, painting, photo-montage and still images produced by professional and amateur artists. It critically explores the uses of heritage and in particular Iraq’s cultural past – namely pertaining to Sumer, Babylon and Assyria but also other symbols of Iraqist identities – as a reflection of protestors’ pursuit of alternative representations of Iraq. In this sense, the Iraq Protest Movement whilst calling for political change was also a platform for imagining a new future for Iraq using its rich culture and past. 

This project centred artists as key actors in the Iraq’s protest movement. Their actions that are pursued in response to protest dynamics are constantly changing and artists and protestors alike found themselves continuously negotiating their presence and participation in the projects, whether in places like Tahrir Square or from further afield. We tried to capture those responses as they are significant to understanding not only motivations for their participation in protests but how artists’ actions influenced their own and collective forms of cultural production. It can explain much about the background to the artwork that this study is concerned with. 

This study explored key themes associated with how visual art was deployed to contest sectarian and religious narratives, which have dominated Iraqi daily life since 2003, and which continue to be reproduced in Iraq’s sectarian and political quota-based system known as ‘Muhasasa’. It also examines the ways in which the pertinent issues of dignity, gender and corruption have been expressed through the eyes of young artists who effectively became the voice of the movement.