Rheim Alkadhi: ‘Templates for Liberation’

You can contain the whole history of a nation in a tarpaulin. At least, Rheim Alkadhi can. The artist, who grew up in Iraq, uses the sturdy plastic material to recount endless stories of colonial exploitation, capitalist greed and ecological disaster.

Tarpaulins are made out of the residues of crude oil refinement, a process Iraq has seen a whole lot of. Its oil reserves have been fought over and exploited for decades, leaving the country in tatters. Tarps are then used to cover heavy goods lorries that move freely across borders, or become improvised tents for displaced peoples. They are a material leaden with symbolism and grim historical and international narratives.

Alkadhi cuts them up and reshapes them. Some are collaged and pinned to the wall like works of industrial minimalism, others are arranged into spiral and wave shapes, but the best are the ones left almost whole and hung up like a painted canvas. 

They’re grimy, dirty things, rust-stained, oil-stained

They’re grimy, dirty things, rust-stained, oil-stained. Serial numbers are left on, rips are unmended. You look at the patterns on the tarpaulins as if they were made with a brush, the result of feverish mark-making by some contemporary descendent of the abstract expressionists, furiously smudging their feelings into the canvas. But the marks are made by tires, oil, sand, dirt, filth, the paintings were composed by time, by everyday use, by the material’s own history, by the country’s history.

The floor-based work with red material reaching up towards the ceiling is the least successful; intended to look like the flames of oil refineries, they’re just too obvious and literal in a show that otherwise manages to make its point more subtly.

The final part of the show is an archival look at the modern history of Iraq. Maps and folders of documentation show the way the country was divided and exploited to serve British and American colonial interests, portraits show images of rebels fighting against occupation. It’s all interesting, but again doesn’t say anything that the actual artworks haven’t already expressed.

Alkadhi’s point is a powerful one though, and it’s when the art is given room to speak that its voice echoes the loudest.