Dia al-Azzawi’s (b. 1939 in Baghdad; lives in London) multifaceted practice has grappled with urgent aesthetic and philosophical questions for over 50 years. As an artist, editor, and director for the antiquities department in Baghdad (1968–76), he has been an active member of many artist collectives, including the Baghdad Modern Art Group and the New Visions Group, and in his own work, has developed a core aesthetic vocabulary connected to the cultural history and mythology of the wider Arab world.
After viewing satellite and drone documentation of the destruction of Mosul in Iraq and Aleppo in Syria, al-Azzawi created Ruins of Two Cities: Mosul and Aleppo (2019–2021), which confronts us with the devastation that most of us have only viewed from a distance. Over thousands of years, these ancient cities were razed and rebuilt but lived on as thriving artistic, intellectual, cultural, and economic centers of exchange. At the same time, such cosmopolitan centers were, as the artist notes, also “subject to the desires of rulers who tried to make their mark on history.” Reflecting on the recent past, al-Azzawi grapples with how these two cities have been “completely destroyed—not by invading armies or airborne enemies during times of open war but by their own sons, who were recruited by external forces to join fanatical factions within an endless political and sectarian conflict.” He continues: “The cities of Mosul and Aleppo are like dreams made of human desires and fears, history, and traditions. It is easier to look at their destruction from a bird’s-eye view, without touching the ground, for fear of touching the ruins that are mixed with the ugliness of what man does to his fellow man.”
