Description of the exhibition
In a book published by Kayfa ta, the artist Ali Yass describes creating The Cloudy Days (2019) using a performative language that bridges process and product, thinking of the rain as both event and lingering residue. This work was inspired by the American imperial tradition, dating back to the Second World War, of dropping leaflets from airplanes flying over Western Europe. It also connects contemporary disasters of war in Yass’s adoptive Germany to his homeland in Iraq.
Yass’s paintings evoke moving bodies of water overhead, a resplendent nature tarnished by war and conflict, and the flesh of those who live on the land and receive these mighty, mythic forces. It attests not only to the impressive sandstorm that delayed the advance of American troops but also calls upon the poetry of renowned Iraqi poet Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab (1926–1964) in its title, content, and imagery.
As military crusades continue in the form of neocolonial expansion, and as the aftermath of the 2003 invasion of Iraq continues to linger in countless theatres of failed “Western liberation,” The Cloudy Days prompts us to think of accumulating clouds and rainfall as a threat to our existence and humanity.
