2018
Acrylic pigmented inkjet print transfer, charcoal, and oil on paper
33 1/2 x 44 in. (85.09 x 111.76 cm)
This drawing is part of an ongoing series titled “after Baghdad family photo”. The photos I have are copies of the original photos we haphazard thrown in our suitcases before leaving Baghdad in 1973. A date on a few delicate ones is as far back as 1930.
I’m perplexed by these family photos, because even when I was old enough to remember the events within my lifetime, I had no memories of the specific event. There is a fantasy, a story around the photo that had little or no bearing on the actual event. An uncomfortable disconnect with the photo always persisted, and grew even worse as I tried to sort out my memories of the photos and their relationship to the actual event. I only had the photo and whatever fantasy I wanted to impose on them.
I’ve played around the photos, taking them through various mediums to see what might come out of the process. In this drawing, I had scanned and copped a section of the photo and made four pigmented inkjet prints which I transferred to paper using acrylic medium. Followed by various random underdrawings in graphite and charcoal, and painted over with acrylic and oil using a projector. That’s the process in a nutshell.
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