They wrought death and destruction in one of the world’s most heavily armed nations, but as the specter of war recedes in Iraq, four students are turning scrap from old guns and munitions into symbols of hope.
In a display of industrial war art in Baghdad’s green zone, a sculpture of a fish is made out of bullet casings; a flower is shaped from the twisted remains of a machine-gun barrel; another depicts the Greek god Atlas holding a wooden map of Iraq instead of shouldering the weight of the Earth.
The show is the work of graduate students at Baghdad University’s College of Fine Arts.
PHOTO: AFP
“It’s a message to the world that these pieces of equipment that bring death can be turned into things of beauty,” said artist Ahmed Imad Aldeen, 27, at his small workshop in the fortified government and diplomatic compound.
“It’s also an appeal to Iraq and the rest of the world that enough is enough. Enough of the killing,” artist Ali Hamid Mohammed said.
The group of four students joined forces last year to create the pieces, which are being displayed in a small room next to a green zone live shooting range.
Many of the dozens of sculptures for sale are abstract, but others, like a version of the famed bust of Egyptian queen Nefertiti, are immediately recognizable.
“When I see each weapon, they speak to me and tell me what they should be,” Aldeen said.
The idea of turning munitions into art was first proposed by Zahim Jihad Mutar, head of a non-government Iraqi armament disposal group.
Mutar, 57, a veteran of the Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s, runs the Iraq Mine Clearance Organization (IMCO), a US State Department and UN-funded group that destroys more than 600 weapons a day.
Sick of the destruction that guns and bombs had inflicted on his country, he began IMCO in late 2003. Then he hit on the idea of turning weapons into art as a way of coming to terms with the past.
The former Iraqi army soldier approached the students last year and agreed to provide them with a place to work as well as supplies of scrap metal from destroyed Chinese and Russian AK-47s, mortar tubes and grenade launchers.
“These weapons for killing people — I wanted to change them into symbols of love, freedom and life,” the former mine specialist said. “These destroyed guns have a message for all people, that art can bring peace.”
Mutar’s firm operates throughout Iraq, destroying weapons confiscated from militants by the US military, deactivating mines and helping train the Iraqi army in mine disposal techniques.
Long before the US invaded Iraq in 2003 to depose president Saddam Hussein, the dictator who formally came to power in 1979 had turned the nation into one of the most militarized countries on earth.
IMCO estimates more than 25 million mines are buried in Iraqi soil and 3 million tonnes of unexploded ordnance blight nearly 10,000 communities. After 20 years as a soldier in Saddam’s army, Mutar said he felt compelled to try to decommission the very weapons he helped to put in place.
“In 1993, I saw a family killed by mines in Basra — the mother and her three children. Locals there asked me to help, and when I began to look around, I found more mines and more people telling me about mine accidents,” he said. “It was then that I decided that mines in Iraq had to be destroyed.”
Later this month, Mutar and the artists hope to inaugurate a new gallery in a more prominent location in the capital. Proceeds from sales will go to orphaned children and victims of mine accidents.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese