Untitled (Primary Title)
Ahmed Alsoudani, Iraqi, born 1975 (Artist)
“I’m not trying to make “war paintings,” but paintings about war. I’m more interested in depicting the effects of war on people who live under these circumstances.” —Ahmed Alsoudani
Ahmed Alsoudani fled Iraq as a teenager in the late 1990s and made his way to the United States, where he eventually studied painting as a graduate student at Yale University. His turbulent images reflect the violence and devastation he experienced firsthand during Saddam Hussein’s regime and the First Gulf War, and then witnessed from afar during the Second Gulf War. At once vivid and dreamlike, his disfigured bodies and landscapes also address universal experiences of conflict and suffering. Here a pile of surreal elements suggests a figure lying in a dentist-chair-as-death-bed, perched atop landscape features and a second figure whose soul seems to be departing. Alsoudani’s mixture of drawing and painting reveals the layered process of the work’s creation and adds to the image’s rawness.
Some object records are not complete and do not reflect VMFA's full and current knowledge. VMFA makes routine updates as records are reviewed and enhanced.