Join Alan Ingram as he chairs a discussion about the Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here project with two of the projects contributing artists, Catherine Cartwright and Mona Kriegler, and guest speaker Dr Safaa Sangour Al-Salih and Rashad Salim. They will be in conversation about this unique project, its significance, and also the process of responding to and creating artwork for this international venture.

Dr Alan Ingram is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at University College London. His research focuses on the responses of artists to war, especially the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq. In 2011 he was awarded a British Academy Mid Career Fellowship for this work and in 2013 curated the exhibition Geographies of War: Iraq Revisited at UCL.

Catherine Cartwright is a printmaker and the UK Coordinator for “Absence and Presence” the latest phase from the Al Mutanabbi Street coalition, and a printmaking response to the bombing of Baghdad’s ancient bookseller’s quarter 5th March 2007. Catherine is a Director for Double Elephant Print Workshop and is currently Artist in Residence at a women and children’s refuge.

Mona Kriegler is a researcher in art and politics with a focus on political writing through poetic frameworks. Her doctoral project is based on dialogue with artists from Iraq and Iraq Kurdistan investigating absences of artistic (un)freedom(s) while negotiating the plural conditions and contexts of the research, making and display of contemporary visual artistic practices.

Dr Safaa Sangour Al-Salih is an Iraqi writer, movie critic, and journalist with a special interest in cultural studies and critical discourse analysis. He was editor in chief of Aladieb Almuaaser (Iraqi writer union’s literary magazine) in the 1990s. He worked as a BBC Arabic correspondent in Iraq and Sudan.

Rashad Salim is a London based artist and activist and has been at the forefront of contemporary Iraqi art for over twenty years. A graduate of Baghdad University and Central St Martins College of Art and Design, he now holds solo and group exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe and the USA.

FREE, rsvp@mosaicrooms.org