Peter Eleey – författare

How artists have examined the legacies of American-led military engagement in IraqThe 1991 Gulf War marked the start of a lengthy period of American-led military involvement in Iraq that led to more than a decade of sanctions, the 2003 Iraq War, and ongoing repercussions throughout the region. Though the Iraq War officially ended in 2011, artists have continued to examine these conflicts and their impacts. Theater of Operations: The Gulf Wars 1991–2011 charts the effects of these wars on cultural production in Iraq and throughout its diasporas, as well as responses to the wars in the West, revealing how this period was defined by unsettling intersections of spectacularized violence and new imperialisms. The exhibition features more than 80 artists and collectives, including Afifa Aleiby, Dia al-Azzawi, Thuraya al-Baqsami, Paul Chan, Harun Farocki, Guerrilla Girls, Thomas Hirschhorn, Hiwa K, Hanaa Malallah, Monira Al Qadiri, Nuha al-Radi and Ala Younis.This catalog features newly commissioned essays by Zainab Bahrani, Rijin Sahakian, Nada Shabout and McKenzie Wark alongside texts by exhibition co-curators Peter Eleey and Ruba Katrib. Excerpts from period journals by artist Nuha Al-Radi and anonymous blogger Riverbend detail life in Iraq over two decades of war, sanctions and occupation. Reprinted essays from Jean Baudrillard and Serge Daney provide additional context, delving into the effects of the conflict upon media and visual culture.

Explore the artist Huma Bhabha’s layered and nuanced sculptures and works on paper that focus on the reinvention of the figure and its expressive possibilities. Through the artist’s fusion of materials such as bronze, iron, wood, or bone, Bhabha’s work unites the ancient and the futuristic, evoking both familiarity and otherworldliness. Her formally innovative practice pulls from a wide range of references, including those that span the history of art, quotidian influences such as science-fiction and horror films, and the makeshift structures and detritus of urban life. Instinctive and rigorous, her formidable sculptures bring diverse aesthetic, cultural, and psychological touchstones into contact with matters of surface, materiality, and formal construction. This publication highlights Bhabha’s ability to move between a wide range of media and forms, creating deeply resonant hybrid figures that seem to simultaneously dwell in the past, present, and future. Published on the occasion of two concurrent exhibitions at David Zwirner in New York in 2024, Welcome . . . to the one who came includes a text by the scholar Tausif Noor that investigates the theme of alienation in Bhabha’s work. In his essay, the curator and writer Peter Eleey situates Bhabha’s practice within the arc of art-historical models and contextualizes her work in the current moment.

Five decades of iconic and incisive art from Barbara KrugerPublished with Los Angeles County Museum of Art.Since the mid-1970s, Barbara Kruger (born 1945) has been interrogating the hierarchies of power and control in works that often combine visual and written language. In her singular graphic style, Kruger probes aspects of identity, desire and consumerism that are embedded in our everyday lives. This volume traces her continuously evolving practice to reveal how she adapts her work in accordance with the moment, site and context. The book features a range of striking images—from her analogue paste-ups of the 1980s to digital productions of the last two decades, including new works produced on the occasion of the exhibition. Also featured are singular works in vinyl, her large-scale room wraps, multichannel videos, site-specific installations and commissioned works.The book also showcases how Kruger’s site-specific works have been reconceived for each venue, and includes a section of reprinted texts selected by the artist. Renowned for her use of direct address and her engagement with contemporary culture, Kruger is one of the most incisive and courageous artists working today. This volume explores how her pictures and words remain urgently resonant in a rapidly changing world.