An Epic of Martyrs: Revolutionary Images and Muslim Mythologies in 1960s Iraq

In the immediate aftermath of the 1963 Iraqi Ba’ath Party-led coup d’état of the Republic of Iraq and assassination of its democratically elected Prime Minister, Abd al-Karim Qasim, several prominent artists began producing new artworks and public art exhibitions. Iraqi artists drew upon transnational anticolonial symbols and common motifs of the heroic worker, farmer, and revolutionary to visualize collective solidarity and resistance against the new regime. Yet these new artistic activities also began incorporating representations and materials drawn specifically from Islamic religious traditions. The activation of historically religious content into contemporary artworks reveals how anti-authoritarian political resistance increasingly comingled with new heroic mythologies in the 1960s Islamic World.

With Elizabeth Rauh, American University of Cairo