Suad al-Attar

Suad al-Attar is widely recognised as one of the pioneering Iraqi artists of the 21st century, famed for her dream-like paintings that depict fantastical landscapes and creatures. Though undoubtedly contemporary in their style and execution, al-Attar's works are deeply rooted in the artistic heritage of her native Iraq, drawing on a wide range of motifs from Islamic design to ancient sculpture that help to shape her relationship to her homeland and culture.

Born in Baghdad in 1942, Suad al-Attar fell in love with painting from a very young age. Considered a prodigy in Baghdad, as a teenager her work was noticed by the influential Iraqi artist Jawad Saleem. He encouraged her to exhibit with The Baghdad Modern Arts Group, making her one of the only female artists to do so.

Al-Attar went on to study Fine Art at both Baghdad University and California State University. She became the first female artist to hold a solo exhibition in Iraq in 1960. Following political turbulence in Iraq in the 1970s, she settled in London in 1976, where she attained post-graduate degrees from Wimbledon School of Art and Central School of Art and Design (now Central Saint Martins).

Over the course of her life, al-Attar's work has undergone a series of transformations as her relationship to her home country changed. Particularly after the artist relocated from Iraq to London, a tension between the artistic freedoms she found in her new city and the longing she felt for her homeland played out in her work. It is perhaps her physical distance from her birthplace that contribute to the dream-like quality of many of her paintings. Al-Attar explores her relationship to Baghdad and Iraq through her unique style, interweaving personal memories with collective memory embedded in the visual language of the Middle East.

Al-Attar references a wide range of Iraqi artistic traditions in her work, including ancient sculptures from Sumer, the winged creatures of Assyrian reliefs, and illustrated manuscripts from medieval Baghdad. Other cultural traditions also find their way into al-Attar's work, especially aspects of myth and legend. Combined with al-Attar's vivid imagination and interest in Western narrative and figurative traditions, these cultural memories contribute to the formation of al-Attar's enigmatic and symbolic painted dreamworld. In her work Garden of Eden (1983), al-Attar draws upon the Islamic conception of gardens of Paradise, the ancient heritage of Iraq as the Fertile Crescent, and the flora of thirteenth-century Baghdadi illuminated manuscripts to envision a haven populated by trees, which symbolise resilience for al-Attar but also confinement.

Al-Attar's work constantly evolves as she continues to be deeply affected by her environment and relationship to Iraq. Since the 1990s, her work has reacted to the country’s ongoing struggles with conflict and war, with motifs of fire, suffering, and mournful faces appearing in her paintings. Her depictions of Baghdad have undergone particularly noticeable change, evolving from the dreamy, turquoise-hued compositions that blossomed from her youthful memories into haunting, infernal images like Homage to Medinat al-Salam (2010) that evoke the city’s suffering since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Suad al-Attar's works are now held and exhibited in collections around the world, from the British Museum, London to the Museum of Modern Art in Kuwait. She continues to work from her studio in London, producing captivating pieces that capture her unique vision of the human experience.