OBAIDI, in conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist

Fragments: An Exhibition by Mahmoud Obaidi retraces the 'organised chaos' that led to the destruction of Iraq, and presents a response to witnessing the city of Baghdad fall piece by piece. In his work, Obaidi recreates what has been stolen or destroyed to try to piece the city back together again. The exhibition shows how Obaidi is grappling with the destruction of an 8,000-year-old civilisation, which has been laid waste in less than a fraction of that time. This publication, wich accompanies the exhibition, includes a survey of the artist's work and an interview with the celebrated curator Hans Ulrich Obrist. Director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, Hans Ulrich Obrist is perhaps best known as creator of The Interview Project, which involves hundreds of hours of published conversations with artists, architects and curators. Obrist has the ability to draw these people out in conversation, encouraging them to tell the story of their artistic journey in a way that brings their projects, both realised and unrealised, to life. This is the case in his conversation with Mahmoud Obaidi, where we learn about the artist's 'multiple exiles' from Iraq, the development of an increasingly political body of work, and his despair about the loss of Iraq following the invasion of 2003 and the ongoing chaos since then.