Issue #2019.05

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, in collaboration with the Arab Image Foundation, Beirut, is delighted to announce Latif Al Ani’s first exhibition at the gallery in Dubai from 18 November to 28 December 2019.
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​Opening Night: 18 November at Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai at 6 p.m.
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​With the title Vetera Novis Augere - ‘augment the old with the new’ - Latif Al Ani’s exhibition interrogates the complex relationship between past and present. It also inaugurates a transmission process from older to younger generations, revealing a past and visual imagery mostly unknown to Iraqis themselves. 

Through the four exhibited series bringing to attention the themes of Architecture, Landscape, as well as illustrating Modernity along with Daily Life and Portrait photography, Latif Al Ani captured, mostly in black and white, the transformations in urban and rural Iraqi society, offering a unique gaze and testimony of the late 50s and early 70s in Iraq.

Premiering in Vetera Novis Auguere is the photographer’s personal selection of 80 images from his wider oeuvre, displayed as a continuous carousel slide show. The succession of handpicked works forming this deeply individual edit reflects Al Ani’s will to represent “all aspects of life in Iraq.” The diversity of images gliding by – education, nature, industry, modernist architecture – projects a past to be seen less through the prism of nostalgia, than as a reactivation of an irrefutable reality, salvaged from oblivion. 

The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war prompted Al Ani's decision to cease his photographic journey once and for good. In 2000, artist Yto Barrada met Latif Al Ani during a research mission in Iraq with Wilfried Blanchard from which Barrada brought his practice to the attention of the Arab Image Foundation in Beirut. Since then the foundation has acted as custodian preserving Al Ani’s archives.

The work of Latif Al Ani (b. 1932) has been presented in many group exhibitions including the National Pavilion of Iraq, organized by the Ruya Foundation and curated by Philippe Van Cauteren, at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) that toured to S.M.A.K. (Museum for Contemporary Art), Ghent (2016) and the Erbil Citadel, Iraq (2017), as well as Bagdad Mon Amour at Institut des Cultures d’Islam, Paris (2018) curated by Morad Montazami. An important survey exhibition curated by Hoor Al Qasimi entitled Latif Al Ani: Through the Lens 1953 – 1979, was presented at Sharjah Art Foundation, UAE (2018), while he also participated in Crude, the inaugural exhibition of Jameel Arts Centre, UAE (2019), curated by Murtaza Vali. Al Ani’s first eponymous monograph, published in 2017 by Hannibal Publishing (and Hatje Cantz), won the prestigious 2017 Historical Books Award at Rencontres d’Arles. Al Ani is also the subject of a documentary dedicated to his unique visual archive of Iraq during the 1950s through the 1970s, produced by Iraqi film director Sahim Omar Khalifa and Belgian filmmaker Jurgen Buedts entitled Iraq Invisible Beauty. In 2015, Al Ani became a Prince Claus Laureate.

Majlis Talk by FOLIO

Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, in collaboration with Alserkal Avenue, is pleased to announce a coinciding public talk between Al Ani and young Beirut-based Iraqi photographer Tamara Abdul Hadi, connecting two generations and artistic voices whilst providing further scope and insight into Al Ani’s widely celebrated documentary archive. The conversation will be conducted in Arabic and translated by Iraqi writer and researcher Maryam Wissam Al Dabbagh. 

^{​Header image: ​ Ancient city of Babylon, Hilla, Babylon, Latif Al Ani, 1970, (2019) Inkjet print on Hahnemuhle fine art photo rag pearl paper 100 x 100 cm Edition of 3 + 2 AP (LAA/PH 032). Latif Al Ani Collection, courtesy of the Arab Image Foundation and Gallery Isabelle van den Eynde, Dubai.} 

^{​Press Release | For any further information or press related requests please contact April Morais at [email protected].}