Artist Bassim al-Shaker, who was included as part of the Iraqi Pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale, is profiled in the New York Times this week, detailing the artist’s story of oppression at the hands of Mahdi Army loyalists, and his life in Arizona, where he is currently working on a business visa to avoid several fundamentalists who nearly killed him earlier this year. “He’s obviously very talented,” Says Rijn Sahakian an Iraqi expat representing the country’s artists abroad, “but we were also focused on saving his life.”
Read more at The New York Times
