Ayyam Gallery London is pleased to announce Driven by Storms (Ali’s Boat), the solo show of leading Iraqi artist Sadik Kwaish Alfraji. Excerpted from Alfraji’s critically acclaimed large-scale exhibition, the multimedia installation describes a simple exchange between the artist and his nephew, Ali, who expressed his longing to escape war-torn Baghdad in a handwritten letter. After receiving the child’s message, however, Alfraji was haunted by the image of a small boat that Ali included to illustrate his dream of floating away from the devastation of Iraq after the 2003 American-led invasion to the safety of the Netherlands where the artist is based. In an accompanying statement Alfraji describes having a similar dream as a young man who longed to escape the misery of his impoverished neighbourhood in the Iraqi capital, which became an enduring site of death and mourning during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.
