Ali Eyal. In the Head's Dusk

Ali Eyal. In the Head's Dusk
December 1, 2022 - March 4, 2023

Curator: Amin Alsaden


Ali Eyal is known for works that merge the ordinary with the surreal. His artistic practice contemplates the elusive complexity, and at times nightmarish absurdity, of this world, in which our lives, stories and desires are inexorably entangled. Rooted in childhood memories, his polychromatic fabulations negotiate harrowing events that unfolded in his hometown of Baghdad, particularly following the devastating 2003 American-led invasion of Iraq. By underlining how the past informs the present, how joy can be born out of suffering and how traumas of conflict haunt local and diasporic communities alike, Eyal addresses themes that resonate with a humanity confronting multiple existential crises today.

In his first solo exhibition in Canada, Eyal presents a constellation of new and existing works, including paintings, videos, and sculptural installations, that shed light on how Iraq’s turmoil captures dynamics that overtly or surreptitiously shape our current global reality. On the twentieth anniversary of the invasion—one of the most flagrant examples of neo-colonialism in recent history—his work raises questions about the immense cost of the world’s voracious appetite for oil. The price includes an unspeakable toll in human lives, planetary environmental degradation and dispossession, displacement and decimation of entire cultural traditions. Although based on personal experience, the artist’s work also elucidates how the occupation of Iraq points to ideological rivalries between capitalism and other worldviews, as well as imperialism’s endless wars, the repercussions of which go far beyond Southwest Asia (or the “Middle East”), often the casualty of incessant Western military adventures.

Through intense introspection, Eyal invokes the challenges of representing the unfathomable scale of the tragedies brought about by armed conflict, which obscure the more nuanced and tender aspects of the survivors’ lives. Poetry coexists with horror in his canvases, and an unsettling anxiety is evinced by the nonsensical logic, pervasive fragmentation and dense agglomerations found across his practice. The anatomical, an allegory for carnage, also intermingles with the botanical, conjuring an alternative world of shadows and the artist’s way of keeping difficult memories alive. Lodged deeply into the unconscious—in the head’s dusk, straddling that fertile zone between waking and sleep—Eyal’s work is ultimately about perseverance, an insistence on bringing to public awareness narratives that have been concealed or suppressed. By giving agency to rebellious recollections, which refuse to be forgotten, Eyal deploys imagination as resistance.



Ali Eyal (1994–) was born in The Forest, Small Farm. After earning a diploma from the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, Iraq, in 2015, he studied at the HWP/Home Workspace Independent Study Program at Ashkal Alwan in Beirut, Lebanon, in 2016–17. His work explores the complex relationships between personal history, transitory memories, politics and identity, using a variety of mediums, with a focus on painting, transformed through other artistic modalities, such as text, installations, photography and video. His work has been exhibited at MoMA PS1, New York; Documenta 15, Kassel; 58 th Carnegie International, Pittsburgh; Beirut Art Center, Beirut; and Warehouse, Abu Dhabi. Eyal’s videos have been included in several exhibitions and festivals, including Rencontres Internationales, Paris; VITRINE x Kino Screenings, London; Sharjah Film Platform, Sharjah Art Foundation, Sharjah; and Cairo Video Festival, Medrar, Cairo.

Amin Alsaden is a curator, educator and scholar whose work focuses on transnational solidarities and exchanges across cultural boundaries. With a commitment to advancing social justice through the arts, Alsaden’s curatorial practice contributes to the dissemination of more diverse, inclusive and global narratives by decentering and expanding existing canons and challenging hegemonic knowledge and power structures. Alsaden’s research explores the history and theory of modern and contemporary art and architecture globally, with specific expertise in the Arab-Muslim world and its diasporas. He has published and lectured widely.