Large, neatly framed giclee prints of children in tragedy, with needles carefully stitched into the wounds of some and skulls over the faces of a few others. Haunting the four walls of Jeddah’s R Gallery are the ghosts of Iraqi artist Muhammad Al-Shammarey’s friends who died in war. The 1971 photograph of his class of 44 children of whom 15 have lost their lives in the Iraqi conflict inspired him to create a series as a tribute.

The gallery’s curator Maya Haraghi is compelled to make the artworks speak volumes by cautiously arranging the artist’s framework and the medium-sized plexiglass sculpture, allowing them to stir a sense of tragedy in the room.

In this series titled ‘My Class of 1971,’ 53-year-old artist Al-Shammarey commemorates his childhood days during the recurring wars in Iraq. Al-Shammarey, through his artwork, pays tribute to his friends who died in the Gulf War, US invasion and Desert Storm Civil War in Iraq. “May their souls rest in peace!” he says.

Al-Shammarey, unlike most artists, confesses his aversion to speak about art but makes the most powerful pieces of artwork.

“My Class of 1971” captures the extent of the damage to life and memory in the Iraqi context. The artist’s third-grade class photograph is the highlight within which death will compete with life and claim its companions one by one. “It is also the site where both individual and collective memory are prematurely severed and fragmented. Where one’s peers disappear and become ghosts that will keep haunting,” explains Al-Shammarey.

“I appreciate Muhammad Al-Shammarey’s art very much,” said Princess Reem Al-Faisal, owner of R Gallery. “As an artist, he is a capable and sure artist. You can see confidence in his work and he knows exactly what he wants to say through his art.”

“In this series, he’s basically telling the story of Iraq through his own personal experience through one picture, which I think is brilliant,” she said. “Just that one picture tells the story of an entire country and all the sadness and all the pain that they’re going through, the different wars, the revolutions and the strikes.”

Al-Faisal was very much impressed by the fact that the Iraqi artist uses a lot of different mediums to express himself. “When he expresses himself in different mediums, they are not forced, they’re natural. It shows in all the mediums he expresses it; whether it’s in his framework art, digital art or his photography.”

Al-Shammarey who spent seven years involved in the Iraqi conflict explicates that the past and its ghosts haunt makers of culture and demand to be addressed.

“In the last decade or so mourning has become a central theme in Iraqi culture, particularly in the diaspora,” he said. “The catastrophic destruction of Iraqi lives by dictatorship, war and military occupation, and the disintegration of national identity make ‘work of mourning’ more urgent.”

The exhibition at R Gallery also showcased works from Al-Shammarey’s previous collections namely ‘Selfies,’ ‘Longing,’ and ‘Dervishes.’

Being part of the UNESCO International Association for Plastic Arts (AIAP), the Iraqi Artist Association, and the Iraqi Society of Plastic Artists, Al-Shammarey’s work has been exhibited throughout the Middle East and North Africa, North America and European regions.

In 2004, Al-Shammarey received the prize of Arab Pioneers from the Arab Pioneers Festival under the patronage of the Arab League. In February 2015, he participated in ‘VIP’, a collective exhibition at EOA Projects in London, which included artists Damien Hirst, Chuck Close and Jeff Koons. His body of work comprises video art, photography, book art, painting, and sculpture.

Explaining his personal experience during the Iraqi warfare, Al-Shammarey writes in his blog, “The war on Iraq that was intended to remove the weapons of mass destruction was launched by those who once handed the weapons of mass destruction to Iraq. Hypocrisy leads to insanity. And in Iraq’s case hypocrisy was mixed with cruelty, with death, with humor and with smart bombs. I don’t like stories and novels, nor political theories, but can someone please tell me how can I be apathetic while witnessing a flow of events leading to the misery of millions of people?”

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