“All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group” is an evolving research project that unfolds across time and geography. First presented at the Hessel Museum of Art at Bard College in New York, the exhibition has since taken on a new form at the NYUAD Art Gallery in Abu Dhabi.

Curated by Dr. Nada Shabout, whose scholarship has long been central to the study of modern Iraqi art, the exhibition traces the legacy of the Baghdad Modern Art Group and its foundational concept of istilham al-turath — drawing inspiration from heritage as a means of shaping a distinctly local modernism. As the exhibition travels, it changes: the Abu Dhabi iteration introduces new works, new artists, and new perspectives, extending the original narrative across generations and diasporic experiences.

In this conversation, Dr. Nada Shabout reflects on how and why the exhibition evolved and explains how curatorial decisions emerge directly from ongoing research. She also speaks about the enduring relevance of the group’s ideas and how contemporary artists continue to negotiate history, loss, and belonging through experimentation.

— Nada, the exhibition “All Manner of Experiments: Legacies of the Baghdad Modern Art Group”, was first held in New York at Bard College's Hessel Museum of Art. Now it is in Abu Dhabi, and I am really interested in how the exhibition has travelled.

— It actually changed. I would say it is about 30% different from what was shown at Bard. The idea for the exhibition came from Bard, and the ideas developed and expanded as I was working on it.

I felt that, since this exhibition is the result of many years of my research, it would be unfortunate not to bring it to this region. The U.S. hasn’t seen this exhibition or the work of this group as a whole, and this region hasn’t either. Individual artists have been shown here and there, but not the entire story unfolding together.

So I pitched the idea to NYU Abu Dhabi. Then, it will travel to Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art in October, where it will change its name. Almost every iteration is a continuation: we keep the core, but we negotiate new aspects each time.

The exhibition at the NYU Abu Dhabi Art Gallery is divided into clusters. These groupings come directly from my research, and through them, I am essentially writing a narrative as the exhibition unfolds.

— What are these groups exactly?

— They all address specific themes. For example, there is a cluster that addresses the group’s exhibitions. That cluster includes a timeline of the exhibitions, with posters, brochures, and related materials.

There is also a cluster about the original members of the group. It also addresses the difficulties of tracing the whereabouts of some of the group's artists or locating specific works by certain members, especially due to destruction, looting, and the wars in Iraq.

So there are multiple stories within each cluster. There is a cluster on istilham al-turath (“drawing inspiration from heritage") as a concept and what it means, another that introduces the group through the co-founders and the manifesto, and so on.

— You mentioned that about 30% of the exhibition changed. What and why?

— For the Abu Dhabi exhibition, I made some changes: some artists and works changed, and I also added younger artists, including an Iraqi artist born and now based in Abu Dhabi. It made sense to follow this line of istilham across different generations and within the diaspora as well.

Some of the works changed. For example, we introduced new works by Jewad Salim to highlight a more experimental, lesser-known side of his practice.

— Could you tell me more about the younger artists you added to the exhibition? Why them?

— I introduced the work of Delair Shaker. He falls somewhere between the 1980s generation and later generations. His father was a well-known ceramicist in Iraq, so he grew up surrounded by this artistic environment, even though he ultimately matured as an artist outside of Iraq — like many artists of the 1980s generation, none of whom are currently living in Iraq.

Then there is an artist, Rand Abdul Jabbar, who was born in Iraq but is based in Abu Dhabi and works there. Her relationship to Iraq began largely through memory: memories passed down from her parents, memories of objects she saw in the home. Later, as an adult, she began travelling to Baghdad, encountering the place directly, and rethinking her relationship and connection to it.

Her work carries similar aesthetics and experiments with those aesthetics, even though she was not directly associated with the group itself. And, of course, her base in Abu Dhabi made her inclusion in this iteration of the exhibition especially meaningful.

— The exhibition covers works from 1946 to 2023. That is quite a wide range. It is clear to see differences between works made many decades ago and more recent ones. Could you share what you noticed?

— Well, even when it comes to the younger generation, the 1980s generation, the works aren’t limited to one period. For some of the artists in the exhibition, I included earlier works from the 1980s and 1990s, as well as more recent works, reflecting how their relationship to Iraq and to the group has changed over time.

Sometimes, somewhat ironically, artists in the diaspora come to understand and reconsider the group’s teachings more deeply. Some become more critical of the directions those ideas took, while others find them necessary in the present moment, even as a way to renew artistic practice.

This is, of course, very different from the position of artists who were producing work at the time, in a moment of euphoria — embracing all kinds of experimentation, newness, new aesthetics, and new readings of history.

— Some artworks are displayed against walls of different colours. Could you explain the reason behind this choice?

— One of the ways we approached colour was by picking up colours from the paintings themselves, colours that the group tended to use in their work.

In general, I am not convinced that we need white walls to exhibit this kind of work. The idea of the white cube doesn’t necessarily apply to modernism everywhere. So in Abu Dhabi, we also worked with variations of colours used by the group in the posters for their own exhibitions, for which we now have the originals. In that sense, research continued to unfold through the process of mounting the exhibition.

The red room is the room of the members. It includes the work of all other members of the group, except Jewad and Shakir Hassan Al Said. So there you see works by Faeq Hassan, Nazir Salim, Naziha Salim, and many others.

— I truly believe that many artists (though not all) create their work in response to something. Is there a particular work in the exhibition whose story you could share with me?

— Many of the works in the exhibition were created in response to very specific historical and personal questions. One of the most powerful examples is Jewad Salim’s Monument of Freedom, commissioned by the Municipality of Baghdad. It was the first monument by an Iraqi artist to be erected in Iraq, replacing earlier colonial and royal monuments that were removed in 1958. Because of its abstract visual language, the monument survived successive political regimes and continues to stand today as a symbol of collective memory and historical transformation.

Jewad Salim’s broader practice also reflects this process of response and experimentation. In several of his works, we see how figuration, abstraction, and ornament intersect, as figures themselves become carriers of historical references rather than literal representations. These experiments were central to the group’s engagement with istilham al-turath.

In the contemporary section of the exhibition, this idea of response becomes more intimate and personal. In The House of My Father by Sadik Kwaish Alfraji, the artist reflects on memory, loss, and displacement through the image of his father’s home. Here, heritage is deeply personal, shaped by exile and mourning.

A related approach appears in the work of Rand Abdul Jabbar, the youngest artist in the exhibition. Working with ceramics, she draws on the medium's ancient history while reconnecting it to personal memory and lived experience. Although she was not directly associated with the Baghdad Modern Art Group, her work carries forward its legacy by rethinking istilham through a contemporary, diasporic lens.