Fragment Without Borders
Hanaa Malallah: “If I can take example of My Country Map which is for this exhibition. This map it is not by bird’s eye view like any normal map. It is by person eye view, which is myself who trapped in chaos of wars. Ironically it is map but it is without border. There is no borders, it's just a fragment. You can't see any border and the other thing in this map, I move the names of the cities randomly and messily, without, without any plans. I hung this canvas in the studio one year and I built it one by one. They are technical, which is by many layers of burnt canvas so there's some sense of burning which is the country in that time in fire. So you get the, the sense of lines or colours just from burning, it is not from traditional material - paint or something. I developed this ruined technique to destroy the material. While I was in Iraq. It is about vanishing and obliteration about the existence. It is really the material and what I do with the material destruction the material, it is my concept.”
Artist Hanaa Malallah left Iraq in 2006 to take up a fellowship in Paris. She left her studio in Baghdad expecting to return within a year but continuing sectarian violence led to her staying in Europe.
My Country Map was the second piece of work she produced after moving to London, where she used the ruins technique she had developed to reflect the sense that the country was “on fire” during that period.
She discusses the process of creating the work over the course of many months and how she reflected the “chaos of war”.
My Country Map was on display at IWM London as part of Age Of Terror: Art since 9/11, the UK’s first major exhibition to consider artists’ responses to war and conflict since 9/11.
Image: Hanaa Malallah My Country Map 2008 - Layers of burnt canvas and oil on canvas © Courtesy The Park Gallery & Roger Fawcett-Tang
