Ala’ Younis: Plan for Feminist Greater Baghdad

Delfina Foundation and Art Jameel
collaborate to present Plan for Feminist Greater Baghdad, a solo exhibition by Ala’ Younis held
simultaneously in London and Dubai. The exhibition includes a major new installation cocommissioned by the two organisations, Plan (fem.) for Greater Baghdad (2018), that builds on
Younis’s 2015 work, Plan for Greater Baghdad, which was included in the Central Exhibition of
the 56th Venice Biennale curated by Okwui Enwezor, and which will be shown alongside the
new commission in the exhibition.
Plan for Greater Baghdad, by Ala Younis at the 56 Venice Biennale. Photo by Alessandra Chemollo.
Courtesy la Biennale di Venezia
In the original work, Plan for Greater Baghdad (2015), Younis looked at monuments, (by)
architects, (for) governments, and the short state of empowerment they gained as politics
shifted in Iraq. The project anchored itself within the history of a gymnasium in Baghdad that
was designed by Le Corbusier and named after Saddam Hussein. Heavily based on archives,
found material, and the stories of its male protagonists, the project explored issues relating to
the protection of monuments for posterity, and the creation of plans for Baghdad as either an
expression of power or as a necessity.
In the newly commissioned work, Plan (fem.) for Greater Baghdad (2018), Younis brings to the
fore the significant contributions made by female artists, architects and other influential
characters to the development of Baghdad and its modern monuments. Typical of Younis’s
investigative practice, the work rearticulates archival material to bring about new narratives. In
this case, the reading sees beyond the male dominance of the city’s architecture and politics, to
reveal the female influence on Baghdad’s history.
Among the main female protagonists that inspired this research are Balkis Sharara, Rifat
Chadirji’s wife who in 1979 smuggled copies of his works into Abu Ghraib allowing him to author
three of his seminal books while in the prison; artist Nuha al-Radi whose diaries of 1990/91
describe the dynamics in the lives of Baghdad’s people beyond the news coverage; an unknown
young woman who stands out in the festivities of the gymnasium’s 1990 new year concert;
Fahrelnissa Zeid who was herself an artist (mostly recently the subject of a major exhibition at
Tate Modern) and the wife of the Iraqi Ambassador in London on the day that Le Corbusier
received a telegram confirming the approval of his first design proposal for Baghdad; poet Iman
Mersal who paid a solidarity visit to Baghdad under siege in 1993; Zaha Hadid whose
architectural drawings influenced the imagination of architectural students in the 1990s; and
others.
Through found materials, documents and oral histories, these stories are presented in the
exhibition through a timeline punctuated with inkjet prints and drawings alongside digitally
sculptured and 3Dprinted models of different figures, which mirror the 2015 male edition of the
work.
This exhibition marks the first time these two major works are shown together.