27/10/2022
This artwork is a group project led by the Iraqi artist Dia al-Azzawi involving 18 colleagues to commemorate the destruction of the statue of the Abbasid caliph Abu Ja'far al-Mansur (r. 136-158 AH/754-775 CE) in 2005. An important landmark in the north-western part of the city.
With this project, the artists want to emphasize commonalities in Iraq's shared culture, coming from different religious and ethnic backgrounds. For this, they created a joint assemblage containing 162 farshi tiles (unglazed, fired paving tiles specific to Baghdad), nine by each participant. Each tile is stamped with a logo of Azzawi's design reading al-Mansur's name; however, the artists were given full independence to create their tiles according to their memories of Baghdad
