1. Ali Eyal (b. Baghdad, 1994), is a visual multimedia artist who explores the complex
relationships between community and politics. He uses different mediums to examine social
attitudes and complexities and their relationship to community and politics, particularly in the
context of Baghdad and Iraq. Eyal is a student at the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad,
specializing in visual arts. He has shown in exhibitions in Baghdad, as well as an exhibition in
Najaf, "Creating the Crown" in 2010. He notably exhibited at the Sharjah Biennial with the writer,
artist, and architect Tony Chakar as he was the illustrator of his book "The dialogue that is us,"
in 2012 He has also shown at the Iraqi Center for Cinema in 2013, at a joint exhibition at the
Galerie Nakhla in 2012, The festival "I am Iraqi, I Read", 2013, and joint work as part of the
education and cultural exchange program and exhibition between students Sada for
Contemporary Art and the University of El Paso, Texas in 2013, and finally, was selected to
show at the Cairo Festival of Video Art V in 2013.

2. 1.) The Body’s Spring. Stop Motion Video, 2014
This video documents the series of wars, destruction in the Iraqi individual and the
effects of this on his/her daily life, his/her personal and quotidian history, his/her being
part of the machine of war daily.

3. 2.) The Body’s Heavy Box. Installation, 2012 (https://vimeo.com/67851362)
This piece focuses on privacy during Saddam Hussein’s regime, the secrecy and daily
family history. The audience becomes the one spying on families’ secret lives and a
military service’s book through a black box. The work operates along the line of an
expression we used in Iraq back then that says, “The walls have ears.” The box is made
of wood (60x80). Inside a painting of a group of members in an Iraqi family during war
and the military service book is my father’s. It is part of the people watching whereby the
audience becomes the spy on what goes on inside the house.

6. 3.) Add Friend So You Can Speak With the President. Interactive installation, 2013
(https://vimeo.com/71391040)
This interactive piece allows the audience to connect via the computer with the
organizations that suppressed the Internet in Iraq and to chat directly through Facebook.
The audience will therefore be able to see political figures that governed Iraq in the
years since the foundation of the Iraqi state but also interact with the imaginary
characters that they represent on Facebook who will reply to any inquiry that they may
have.

10. 4.) Two Meter Movement. Installation, 2014
This installation documents an urban illusion whereby the audience will see smoke coming
out of the painting, yet this smoke doesn’t not necessarily represent the smoke of an
explosion but of a bakery. The environment, however, does not concern the baker. The
space that separates my home and the Institute of Art which I attend is kilometers away and
constantly changing in its routes and how you can get to both points as daily events shift -
just as daily images are what the city offers but no one can keep. I was compelled to paint
Baghdad in the Rasafah and Al Karakh neighborhoods (the two main parts of the city) on
two meters of canvas and to draw the shape of the city in and its buildings with black lines
but without their details or architectural precision until the illusion between the space and
thought emerges out of this simplistic perspective of the ideal world. Perhaps it is the
modern, utopic city in which the individuals are equals and where life aspires to collectivity.
Or perhaps it is a bitter reality in which the individual stopped short of imagining unity.

13. 5.) Tourist trips in Baghdad. Album Installation, 2013
This is an album of tourist trips in Baghdad that started with a cultural exchange between
Sada art students in Baghdad and art students at the University of El Paso, Texas. The
album contains drawings of the borders between Texas and Baghdad. These works were
produced in the framework of this exchange and was made to document the illusion of
tourism in Baghdad with the evolving social problems, which became mundane and became
a material with which one can take pictures. The situation has become visible and tangible
between people until it made us become the tourists and museum visitors.

16. 6.) An Islamic Nightclub. Painting (60x80), 2012
This painting encapsulates my view of modern Islam in our society. That should be enough.

17. 7.) Kafka Was Here Once. Painting (60x80), 2013
This painting is part of an attempt to record a difficult experience that I’ve gone through and
which resembles experiences many have encountered daily. I imagined that we were all
similar to Kafka’s cockroaches in that I think that everyone can see them but in reality, they
don’t know what they look like. I collaged photos of my father who went missing in 2005
during Iraq’s sectarian war along with many others. We live in a lost space like Kafka’s
imaginary one, we try to find ourselves in this world with nobility and human integrity.