Art in Iraq: ‘Baghdad is happening! It’s like New York...’

posted on: Apr 21, 2015

Hussein Adel is a struggling young artist sharing a tiny bedsit and living on take-out sandwiches. But the car horns blaring on the busy Baghdad street outside are a reminder that he is living his dream.

“Baghdad is where everything is happening – it’s like New York,” he says, surrounded by his paintings and sketches on the bed he and his two roommates take turns sharing.

Adel was 15 when his father, who had himself dreamed of studying art, brought him here from the provincial southern city of Nasriyah to enrol in Baghdad’s Academy of Fine Arts. “He stayed with me for two months and then he said: ‘You can take care of yourself better than I can. If I stay with you, you won’t become a man,’” says Adel.

Source: www.theguardian.com