Civic Engagement, Public Intellectualism, and Art

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.13169/jinte.6.1.0008
• Published date: 11 November 2022
• Date: 11 November 2022
• Pages: 79-98
• Author: Autumn Cockrell-Abdullah
• Subject Matter: Kurdish art,Iraqi Kurdistan,Clamor,Tekist,Sulaimani,site-specific art,intersectionality,conflict

68 Volume Six, Number One

“Civic Engagement, Public Intellectualism, and Art” — Cockrell-Abdullah

Civic Engagement, Public Intellectualism, and Art

Autumn Cockrell-Abdul lah, Ph.D.

Visitin g Assistant Professor of Political S cience, Departme nt of Political Science, Ag nes Scott College, Georg ia, USA

Research Fellow, Gl obal South Research Consortiu m

Abstract: Revisiting a previously unpublished analysis of the Clamor (2016) and Tekist (2017) art shows

presented at the Fine Arts Institute and the Museum of Moder n Art in Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan,

Cockrell-Abdullah considers the spaces in which artists are siting their work so that they may speak to

specic public audiences and their social and cultural concerns, and how this work creates sheltered civic

space in Kurdish society that allows for open discussion of social problems.

Keywords: Kurdish art, Iraqi Kurdistan, Clamor, Tekist, Sulaimani, site-specic art, intersectionality,

conict

“Call art whatever you want, and call whatever you want art. It’s not

important. What is important is challenging tradition. For generations in

Sulaymaniyah City, and many other communities, the artistic collective

has been restricted by the borders of tradition. Only recently have those

boundaries been pushed to encompass an entirely new perspective on what

is truly considered art. It is the responsibility of these newer generations

to keep breaking the walls of tradition; not to tear down what built the

culture, but to create new paths for the culture to travel and allowing that

culture to experience the feeling of contemporary artistic expression. And

it is our responsibility to support those who are challenging the mores

of their society; it is the least that can be given in appreciation of their

courage and passion. When one way expires, it gives space and power to

the new.”

— Artist Zewar Fadhil1

Call Art Whatever You Want

It started with a question: “How are Iraqi Kurdish artists contesting notions of tradition, history,

and the nation? What does an examination of the process of making art, starting from the site

of production to the artwork’s visual content to where it meets its audience, tell us about how

relationships of power are being negotiated, transformed, or contested?” Nearly a decade later,

with sincere thanks for the help and patience of many artists, I learned that the answer to the

rst part of this question was not simple. Iraqi Kurdish artists are contesting notions of tradition,

1 Fadhil, Zewar. Facebook post, February 12, 2017.

Journal of Intersectionality

69DOI: 10.13169/jinte.6.1.0008

history, and the imagining of the Kurdish nation in ways that cannot be easily characterized nor

contained within the traditional territories of the gallery or denitions of art. These works are

rmly rooted in the local geographies of Kurdistan in which they were sited. I have also learned

that artists methods are diverse, highly contextual, intersectional, multi-sited, and uid. They are

curated for and speak to a specic public and to the social and cultural concerns of that public.

The shading, the distinctions, and the shadows in the second part of that question have

come to preoccupy my mind in the years since beginning the work of researching contemporary

Kurdish art and the work of Kurdish artists in Iraqi Kurdistan. “What does an examination of the

process of making art, starting from the site of production to the artwork’s visual content to where

it meets its audience, tell us about how relationships of power are being negotiated, transformed,

or contested?” One thing it tells us is that dening what is and what is not art is important and

means something. The patron class, artists, and society are wrangling with delimiting the range of

objects that are referred to as art, and dening a central nature to the art produced by Kurdish

artists in Kurdistan. I must disagree with Zewar Fadhil, quoted above, when he states, “Call art

whatever you want, and call whatever you want art. It’s not important.” How art is dened and who gets to

constitute that denition is important, as numerous scholars have pointed out, and it is a highly

contextual, intersectional, and multi-sited frontline of conict for Kurdish artists.2 As I have argued

in earlier published works, an examination of the patron-client relationships of artists in the region

suggests that despite structural changes to the Iraqi state and the Kurdish Regional Government

that brought about a weakening of the ability of powerful government patrons to support client-

artists, the patron-client relationship continues to predominate. There is, however, ample evidence

to suggest that these relationships are changing and adapting, introducing the element of change

into this relationship of power and into other areas of Kurdish political, economic, social, and

cultural life.3

Audience at the Clamor art show, November 12, 2016 (photo by Autumn Cockrell-Abdullah)

2 Cliord 1999; See also Berleant 1964 and Davies 2015.

3 Cockrell-Abdullah 2018 (1).