Hana Malallah (Iraqi, b. 1958)

admire Robert Smithson and the way he expressed his predicament when he said, 'When a thing is seen through the consciousness of temporality, it is changed into something that is nothing... it ceases being a mere object and becomes art.''
(Hana Malallah, 2005)


'Hana Malallah was highly influenced by Shakir Hassan al Sayad, one of the Iraqi art pioneers of the 1950s. The present lot, The Looting of the Museum of Art, is created on wood that the artist cut, burned and painted. Like many of her works, it bears her signature grid of triangles which recalls the Islamic ceramic tiles that decorate many ancient walls in Baghdad. 'The brown color,' she says, 'is from burning. It's like the color of my life in Baghdad.' Hana is a proud member of the Iraqi Phoenix group and she strongly believes that creativity has survived through the war.

Notable among Hana's exhibitions are the National Museum of Modern Art in Amman, Jordan (1997), the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris (2000) and Women Artists of the Islamic World sponsored by UNESCO (2003). Her works are held by the Royal Jordanian Museum and private collections worldwide.'

(Peter Hastings Falk, curator of Contemporary Iraqi Art: The Iraqi Phoenix, New York, Pomegranate gallery, 2007.)