A solo exhibition of works by Alaa Siraih

Born in Basra, Iraq with a Bain Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts, Baghdad, Alaa worked as a theatre designer at the Baghdad National Theatre. He has exhibited widely in Iraq, the Middle East and Europe. Ala has been living and working in London since 1998.

‘In my paintings, I try to discover and to study the city in order to change its characters, in an attempt to radicalize it and to grant it a unique artistic and visual identity despite the diversity of the surrounding atmospheres. Cities have their own memories, history, ways and labyrinths. I did not try to reflect the city as it is, but catching it through a visual access and changing it through art into a utopia with its own symbols and senses along with my own feelings towards it as a scene with an ambiguous meaning. I dealt with it as a product of the past. From this perspective, the city seems to be a pure and a happy place. In this respect it serves as a cover, a container of the past keeping all the old impossible dreams inside. This is turning it for me into a source of sorrow, remembrances and real figures. The other view concerns the city as it is now, in the present time, along with its reality and sufferings. The city I am trying to portray is a mixture of the past and the present, a mixture of reality and dreams, of memories and impossible desires. In my cities, the border of joy fades to pain and turns out to be a dream full of reality or a complicated and intensive symbol enriched by genuine reflections. The techniques and colours together create a world on space that is about to speak out. My city is either a souvenir or a reality that can be looked at through a sensitive eye and an emotional and excited mind. It is an attempt to fix my longings on canvas. Though it is not an invitation to go back to the past, it reflects the need to go beyond the coloured spaces and behind the entrances of my cities which are built on the ground of the past as it was in itself life waiting to be set free from its captivity.’