LAURA STEWART: Hi Tamara. To start let me read you a quote that the Venice curator, Gioni Massiliamio gave to Artforum magazine and ask you, as an historian what your reaction is?

MASSILIAMIO GIONI QUOTE:

TC: I’ve taken notice of what Gioni has said, of course, about his vision and  about how other countries have curated and organized their pavilions — but in my case the reality was far less glamorous or intellectual. It was far more process-based than ideas-based at the beginning because of the nature of Iraq.

LS: How did you come to be involved in organizing the Iraqi Pavilion?

TC: I was approached by the patrons committee that helped with fundraising for the last Iraq pavilion in 2011 which was the first one in 35 years. It was a miracle that it was even there. It was a tiny artist from the Diaspora. So many artists had to leave during the war. So the idea this year was to set something up that would be able to allow for Iraqi participation.

The whole politics involving the project evolved in a strange way. I thought it was important that there should be something to underpin it that was Iraqi based. I went about with my colleagues talking to people in the Iraqi government and with Shwan Taha who is on the Venice patrons committee. We were quite pro-active and after many discussions we decided that the best way would be to set up a foundation and so I went about setting up the RUYA Foundation for Contemporary Culture in Baghdad.

I wanted it to be more along the lines of the British Arts Council in the U.K., rather than a non-profit wholly independent of the government but the government in Iraq is not interested in culture projects at all.

LS: Explain a bit more about why that is and what the prevailing attitudes towards art and culture are in Iraq today?

TC: I didn’t grow up in Iraq, I was born in Beirut. Iraq is so overwhelming when you look at the history.  And Oh my God Iraq is still so stuck in a Stalinist bubble. We are still dealing every day with the attitudes and remnants of a dictatorship even though the dictator is gone.

We asked for no funding for our project from the government. In a place like Iraq the government isn’t your friend.

There is no semblance in Iraq of the professional way these things are done in other places. The Saddam Hussein regime was a totalitarian, Stalinist set up — state-run with the concretized layers of bureaucracy and rigid thinking that go with it.

What many people don’t realize is that Iraq is very different from most of the other countries in the Gulf. The other countries are in this struggle between religious government and democratic/secular government and are dealing with these types of issues.  Iraq is much more like a post-Soviet satellite country in its mores, defining culture and struggles.

LS: So you raised the money for Venice privately through the foundation?

TC: Yes, entirely.

LS: Once you had the monies for the project how did you go about choosing a curator and the artists and theme for this year’s pavilion?

TC: At the beginning I began to reach out to curators in the region, some with international names, different kinds of curators, and it soon became clear to me that we needed to find someone with international experience and expertise.

So we then went outside of Iraq and reached out to the curators to get a balance, considering the fact that the idea of a curator, even the term itself, does not exist in Iraq. Although we had to go outside of Iraq for curatorial skills we needed to find artists who are invested in the Country and a curator who could work with them.

It was essential that we find someone who was sensitive to the idiosyncratic issues facing Iraq. I was fortunate enough to finally meet Jonathan (Watkins)** from the U.K. I also decided early on that we needed to have artists from the country — not diaspora.

Curator Jonathan Watkins on the rooftop of the historic Mustansiriya School building in old Baghdad, Courtesy Ruya Foundation

LS: Why did you and your colleagues ultimately decide that Jonathan was the right person for the project?

TC: Finally when Jonathan was a possibility we had a very good, long talk and I am so glad it ended up being him.

I didn’t want the project to be a post-Colonial thing and I knew people in the government and cultural ministry in Iraq were going to be upset that it was a British or an American curator.

Jonathan is extremely sensitive to the nuances and bad feelings that can bubble to the surface when Western curators come to “do” Middle Eastern art and culture projects.

Because of this sensitivity I was able to convince the powers that be that in the end we benefit from his art knowledge and he is very conscious of the legacy of the attitudes towards Iraq (disdain, arrogant Western attitudes etc.) and so in the end he was just the right guy.

LS: How did you two collaborate and then collaborate with the artists? And how did he learn what he needed to learn to work in sympathy with Iraqi artists?

TC: When the time came to begin the project, Jonathan came to Iraq for three different extended periods. We traveled in the North in the area that is primarily Kurdish and I arranged for different visits for him in Basra, Baghdad, Babylon — really all over — to give him a full sense of the country and steep him in the culture.

LS: And then I assume you and he began to think about how to do the Iraq pavilion both thematically and what artists should be represented.

TC: Yes and that was a very interesting process for us as I, as an outsider to the art world felt that we really needed to keep our project close to the situation faced by the Iraqi people and not get too academic or pretentious?

LS: I see your point, but this is the Venice Biennale where “pretentious” and “academic” are kind of the bywords and conceptual, performance and multi-media installation art is its defining zeitgeist. How did you do both a relevant and high quality pavilion yet stick to your anti-elitist stance?

TC: From that perspective a lot needs to be said about the Contemporary art community in general. I think it is sad that there are talented artists who have come out of the (Gulf) region and many who have incredible influences and educations from the Slade and other art schools abroad. In some cases they just become trendy and commercial to cash in on the Arab Spring and these kinds of themes. These were not the artists that we wanted to represent us.

LS: You seem to feel quite strongly about this point of “keeping it real.” Can you explain further your ideas about that and how you ultimately pulled it off?

TC: The challenge was really how to represent Iraq and do it justice without “crutches.”  We don’t have the “cool factor” or the resources of the other countries in Venice. Today in Iraq it is still a struggle just to survive.

Whatever art materials are available are of poor quality and life for everyone, including the artists  who are still there, is still very basic, you know trying to live without electricity and clean water and medicine a great deal of the time.

The truth of the matter is that there is actually not just a dearth of art supplies but a real lack of basic necessities and so we were dealing with a really difficult situation.

Even the process of finding the artists was very difficult. There is no database in Iraq and there are about 3 functioning galleries. I kept thinking: How do you work in this context? I arranged a series of lunches to get people in the art communities around Iraq connected and get the word out — and then people just started sending in work.

LS: Was there any point where you thought, this is just too hard. I am in over my head and I can’t pull it off?

TC: Nobody can imagine what is actually going on in Iraq. And so yes, in the process, I began to doubt myself. I thought maybe I was being too ambitious, and at times I thought that maybe we should wait until next time, and we were just not ready to pull it off.

But ultimately we did. And in the end it was liberating. Because Iraq suffers paradoxically from deep insecurity and an indigenous arrogance relating to its really quite extraordinary place in the history of civilization, I think what we were able to accomplish was really quite amazing.

LS: And so to the theme of your pavilion and the artists and their work…?

TC: Yes, so the theme is Welcome of Iraq — which was in Iraq’s case kind of how the Encyclopedic Palace theme morphed into the idea of: “How do you survive with soul and grace in this nightmare of a country?”

Jonathan has a great “eye” and had the ability to do the core curatorial piece of the work. And the “Encyclopedic” theme also fit well into how I look at art as an outsider. I am interested in textiles and carpets and other things that expand the definition of what is considered art. And the Palace part is interesting because our pavilion is a Palazzo but a homey one, not a palace at all.

LS: So tell me about your pavilion?

TC: When it came to the pavilion itself we came to where we are because it is cheap!  It is called Palazzo Dandolo and it is on the Grand Canal. You can see everything around you.

It is quite simple and really all about human survival and human grace and universal values and ended up being very fortuitous since it sets a tone of domesticity, which is very gentle and calming.

When you are inside the house you have the sunshine pouring in through these huge windows and it creates a very Zen “feel” that is very unlike the sterile “white cube” feel of other pavilions and the prevailing presentation of contemporary art today.

It wasn’t possible to have that type of space for us and in the end it just felt right that it worked out that way.

A blast wall with a painting by an unknown artist and graffiti. Courtesy RUYA foundation

LS: That is very interesting in that the venue really set the tone. So now tell me about the artists and the artwork that will be exhibited?

TC: When we selected the artwork — the whole thing came together — and was in the end, the polar opposite of what the richer and more “elite” nations in the Gulf were doing.

Jonathan kept wondering how he could make it accessible to people. He wanted to incorporate the theme so close to those of the diaspora and those displaced by war: the longing for a sense of home.  He also wanted to make sure that we didn’t lose sight of the humanity and commonality of what all people feel whether they are displaced, inside a country like Iraq, or anywhere else.

(Explaining his curatorial approach, Watkins was quoted as saying: “Artistic emphasis will be on the nature of everyday life as it is now lived in Iraq, exemplifying a determination ‘to make do and get by,’ an inventiveness borne out of necessity in extraordinary historical circumstances.’’)

TC: People cry, they fall in love. It doesn’t stop because of the bombs. So our space is human, welcoming and cozy. It is essentially a bourgeois space, an apartment  if you will–and most of the furniture that was already there will remain and the art will be insinuated into the existing space.

Other ideas we had included that as Iraq is an ancient country — the cradle of civilization — to illustrate that point we will have books available that people can sit and read when they are in the space.l We are grateful to the Iraq National Archive Center — an organization that is collecting important books relating to Iraq — that kindly allowed us to borrow over 200 books.

Another idea we had relates to the wonderful tradition of weaving and textile design in the Kurdish North. We will  have beautiful cushions — not too crafty — and exquisite carpets from Iraq to replace the carpets that were previously in the Palazzo. Again, we are doing this to summon the spirit of Iraq by filling the pavilion with objects that one would find there.

Finally, we thought about what else is the essence of Iraq.  Of course that would be the tradition of drinking tea! So we will be serving tea in beautiful Iraqi teacups with many types of Iraqi sweets and cakes — teaching the Venetian pastry chef how to make the Iraqi cakes is another very funny story**.

As some of the artists have done films, we thought it would be cool if visitors could watch them on laptops which we have put in the Palazzo. Again we are trying to reinforce the feeling of the pavilion as a place that is welcoming and accessible and not artificial like the spaces in which you would ordinarily see contemporary film work.

We have also gotten a wonderful musician to play the Oud, (the most traditional Middle Eastern instrument) and there is one entire room in the Palazzo where one of the artists has made an installation made out of cardboard including a cardboard radio from which the Oud music will come.

You know the saying: “Necessity is the Mother of Invention” — that in our case, was the definition of creativity.

We invented a great deal of this because we did not have the resources to do more. In the end, whether by accident or design, the pavilion and the art really represents what the people of Iraq do and think about on a daily basis. So ultimately there is not a disconnect between the elite nature of the art world and the event in Venice and the often difficult and harsh reality of life in Iraq.