An Article by C.J. (641 words, 3 min. read)
From September 11 to October 31, Saleh Barakat Gallery hosts False Witnesses, an ideal stage for Dia al Azzawi’s monumental vision. Entering the space feels like walking into a chamber where history does not rest on pages but rises in form, memory, and presence. The works gathered here speak of war, of uprisings, of cities undone and remade through loss, and they do so with the force of an artist who has spent decades insisting that voices silenced by violence can still be heard. Azzawi once said, “I feel I am a witness. If I can give a voice to somebody who has no voice, that is what I should do.” That conviction pulses through every piece on display. Born in Baghdad in 1939, trained in archaeology and fine arts, shaped by exile since 1976, Azzawi has become both chronicler and visionary, carrying fragments of Arab history into global consciousness.
Forms That Refuse Oblivion
At the centre of the gathering stands Paradise of the Forgotten (2023). A life-sized figure in resin lifts arms as though calling to the sky, twelve white ceramic birds at its feet. The figure invokes Safaa Al Saray, a protester killed in October 2019 in Baghdad, who became a symbol. On the reverse of the canvas, more than seven hundred names are inscribed. These names are not background; they become heartbeat, voice, collective breath.
Three metallic roses — two in silver, one in gold — from the October Rose series shine with cold beauty, their petals shaped by hard metal. Close by, Victims’ Rose, begun in 2010 in painted and bronze form, bears visible wounds. Together these floral forms stand in tension between delicacy and force, life and damage.
Shadows, Faces, Maps
Hidden Wishes (2019) draws two mirrored forms, stripped of colour except for red cuts across them. This is part of Azzawi’s Land of Darkness cycle, begun in the early 1990s, a long meditation on suffering, memory, and what remains after light recedes. False Witnesses (2019), which gives the name to this exhibition, arranges anonymous, faceless figures: they stand in line, they testify without words, they bear witness through absence.
The city of Baghdad appears next as both map and wound. Two 2023 canvases: the first interweaves hues to suggest diversity, life, shared geography; the second fractures into blocks that isolate, separate, divide. Colour becomes memory; fragmentation becomes testimony.
Ruins That Speak
Mosul and Aleppo, once proud, once luminous, appear here in works that mourn what war carved into earth. Panorama of Destruction (2017/2022) transforms an earlier ink drawing into a monumental textile, black lines racing across white fields, ruins and forms swirling in a whirlwind of devastation and chaos. Ruins of Two Cities: Mosul and Aleppo (2020) lies across the floor as a ceramic grid: a bird’s-eye view of neighbourhoods, homes, worship places, shops, ghosted outlines of what was once whole.
The Role of the Artist as Shout
Azzawi’s voice is never distant. He has said that poetry helped him invent pictorial symbols: “In my paintings, the bird stands for freedom, travelling and exile.” These symbols are nothing less than languages of resistance. Through calligraphy, form, sculpture, map, he insists that the consequences of war are not erased or forgotten. He channels rage, mourning, hope, memory into works that engage not just the eye but the heart.
Resonance Beyond Borders
Many works were created in Lebanon, in a joint studio at the Nabu Museum complex. That location matters: in October 2019 Lebanon and Iraq rose together, their people in streets, seeking voice, seeking change. By making these works there, Azzawi links two countries in shared pain, shared courage.
Through names, forms, birds, roses, and maps, he transforms absence into presence, silence into testimony. False Witnesses is a shout: that neither war nor neglect can extinguish memory or stifle justice.
